08 Jan 14 | Comment, France, News and features, Religion and Culture
It’s coming up to the seventh anniversary of the death of Hrant Dink. Just today, two people have been arrested in connection with his assassination.
Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, understood censorship and free speech more than most. In Turkey, the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century remains taboo, and discussion of it can result in charges under the infamous article 301 of the country’s criminal code – the crime of “insulting Turkishness”.
Recognition of the genocide is an important part of Armenian identity, and many Armenians in the the country itself, Turkey, and the wider diaspora were pleased when, in 2006, French politicians proposed a law making denial of the Armenian genocide illegal. But Dink, understanding that censorious laws hurt everyone, dissented, saying:
“As you know, I have been tried in Turkey for saying the Armenian genocide exists, and I have talked about how wrong this is. But at the same time, I cannot accept that in France you could possibly now be tried for denying the Armenian genocide. If this bill becomes law, I will be among the first to head for France and break the law. Then we can watch both the Turkish Republic and the French government race against each other to condemn me. We can watch to see which will throw me into jail first”
Dink was assassinated, and the bill was blocked, though it reared its head again in 2012, only to be deemed unconstitutional.
One wonders what Dink would have made of president Francois Hollande’s bid to ban public performances by comic and political activist Dieudonne, inventor of the “qeunelle” gesture – an inverted Nazi salute dressed up as an “anti-establishment” gesture. Dieudonne, who ran on an “anti-Zionist” platform in the last election, says there is nothing anti-Semitic about the quenelle, a claim undermined by the spread of pictures of smirking fans quenelling near synagogues, holocaust memorials and even outside the Marseilles Jewish school where three children and a religion teacher were shot down in cold blood in 2012.
It’s important to be clear on this: the quenelle is an anti-Semitic gesture. Dieudonne’s defenders, such illustrious figures as Diane Johnstone and Alain Soral (what we might call the Counterpunch Left), will claim that it is not.
But that is because they are defending Dieudonne’s views, rather than Dieudonne’s right to free speech. It’s an important distinction. Too often, we either attempt to defend free speech by downplaying what’s actually being said (“it’s not that bad”), or claiming it’s something that it’s not (“this isn’t actually racist; it’s, er…”)
Similarly we attempt to justify shutting down free speech by saying something is not a matter of free speech, or worse, resorting to the fact of an existing law or prevalent social mores rather than making a moral argument (as Bernard-Henri Lévy did while discussing the Dieudonne case on theBBC’s Today programme).
A genuine defence of free speech demands that we look what’s happening directly in the eye.
The quenelle is anti-semitic. Dieudonne is anti-semitic. Dieudonne has a right to free speech.
Hrant Dink would have understood that.
25 Nov 13 | France, News and features, Politics and Society
French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira makes a speech about penal reform in the lecture hall of the Political Science University in Paris. (Photo: Davide Del Giudice / Demotix)
An obscure 16 page-long far-right magazine recently put France’s black justice minister Christiane Taubira on its cover, comparing her to a monkey. The storm of indignation that followed gave unexpected visibility to the magazine and members of the government expressed their desire to sue the magazine or to block the distribution of the infamous issue. Was this an attack on the freedom of the press? Or rather, an occasion for French politicians to look good and to make everyone forget about their own track record?
“Crafty as a monkey, Taubira gets her banana back”, said Minute’s cover, next to a photo of Taubira looking unhappy. The title used a common French phrase (“avoir la banane” means “to be in good form” in French).
Following the outrage caused by this cover, Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s prime minister, asked prosecutors to investigate whether any law had been broken. The prosecutors decided it had and opened an investigation for “injure publique à caractère racial” (racist public slur). The interior minister, Manuel Valls, announced he was examining whether it was legally possible to block the distribution of the magazine. This, however, has not been followed by any measures.
Taubira, 61, was born in French Guyana, where she started her political career as a supporter of independence for the ex-colony. She has been the driving force behind the 2001 law that recognises the Atlantic trade and slavery as a crime against humanity and a strong advocate of the law allowing same-sex marriage passed this year.
As such, she has suffered an escalation of racist abuse from the opponents to same sex-marriage. Last month, Anne-Sophie Leclere, a Front National municipal election candidate, was dismissed by her party after comparing Taubira to a monkey on her Facebook page and on TV. “I prefer to see her swinging from the branches of a tree than in the governement”, she told a reporter. The FN subsequently sued Taubira for having insulted the party.
During a recent visit to Angers, the minister faced kids from the “Manif pour tous” waving a banana at her and chanting: “Who’s the banana for? For the monkey!” The abuse is reminiscent to what Cécile Kyenge, minister of integration in the current Italian governement, has been facing in Italy and rife with references to colonisation: In an October demonstration of the extremist Catholic Civitas Institute, a priest was heard shouting: “Y’a bon Banania, y’a pas bon Taubira” – a reference to the old advert for Banania chocolate powder which featured a Senegalese infantry man speaking in pidgin French, an advert which is seen as a symbol of French colonialism.
Minute’s words “deny that I belong to the human race”, said Taubira, who refused to prosecute the magazine.
Created by supporters of French colonisation in Algeria in 1962, Minute backed the Front National party in the 1970’s and has been struggling over the past years. Its publishing company went into administration last March and the magazine currently counts only three employees. For the magazine, the infamous front page has been a success: “We wanted free publicity. We got more than we could have dreamed of”, said one of their journalists. Hélène Valette, spokeperson for Minute added: “We take responsibility for this cover. It’s satirical. No one takes offense at the covers of Charlie Hebdo.”
Satirical publication Charlie Hebdo responded to this statement saying: “Some people have actually taken offense at the covers of Charlie Hebdo, among which the Catholic far-right which has sued us 12 times in 20 years (…) Minute does not defend the freedom of the press. It prepares the ground for future racist crimes.”
The law against racist public slur was added in 1972 to the 1881 Law on Press Freedom. France has some of the toughest hate speech laws in the EU. Minute’s editor is risking up to six months in jail and a 22,500 euros fee.
For French politicians and for the press, the racist abuse against Taubira has actually provided an occasion to express unanimous indignation and to push under the carpet their own recourse to racist rhetorics. As Julien Salingue wrote in Acrimed (an independent organisation criticising the media) some of the media coverage of the abuse looked like an investigation led by suspects. “Has France become racist?” recently asked the Parisien newspaper on its front page, forgetting previous covers demonising migrants. The pattern was shared by Le Point and L’Express magazines, known for their sensationalistic Islamophobic covers.
At the launch of the Front National municipal campaign, a journalist from France Inter radio deemed fit to give a platform to 85 year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen and ask him for his opinion of Christiane Taubira. Always predictable, Le Pen said that because Taubira had been independentist she was against France and had been chosen because the colour of her skin could serve as a shield when proposing unacceptable laws.
Interior minister Manuel Valls has used the attacks on Taubira to his political advantage and has been very prompt in saying he wanted to ban the circulation of Minute – which seemed at best useless, as the damage had been done, at worst, counterproductive: it would insure more publicity for Minute and allow the publication to portray itself as a defendant of the freedom of the press. Valls happens to be well-known for its anti-immigrants and anti-Roma policies and rhetorics. France’s national union for undocumented migrants, which is planning a protest in front of the Parti Socialiste headquarters on 27 November, argues that “the liberation of racist speech is a result of the policy of successive governments which have agreed to the idea that “immigration is a problem” and stigmatised Roma people, Muslims and all foreigners, especially undocumented people.”
Henri Maler, one of Acrimed founders, tweeted: “Fighting racism exclusively by outraged declarations and legal action = emptying the ocean with a tea spoon.”
This article was originally posted on 25 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
19 Aug 13 | Digital Freedom, France, News and features, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Freedom of expression is generally protected in France, although is limited by strict defamation and privacy laws. Several laws have passed since 1972 that have further restricted this fundamental right.
In addition to strict privacy laws, France’s libel laws make it easy to sue for defamation. Losing a libel case against a public official carries a higher fine (€45,000) than libel against a private individual (€12,000), which chills public interest criticism of politicians and government officials.
France has some of the toughest hate speech laws in the EU. The number of legal actions for hate speech have multiplied after the 1881 Law on Press Freedom was amended to introduce the offence of inciting racial hatred, discrimination, violence, or contesting the existence of crimes against humanity, which has been very broadly interpreted as the right not to be offended or criticised. Some civil society groups have even managed to force the cancellation of public debates in order to prevent potentially libellous or racist remarks[1].
Since 2004, wearing signs or clothing that overtly manifest a religious affiliation is prohibited in schools[2]. In 2011, France implemented a ban on the niqab or face veil in public places. In September 2011, Paris passed a ban on Muslim street prayers, restricting the right to religious expression.
Media Freedom
France’s media is generally regarded as free and represents a wide range of political opinion. Still, it faces economic, social and political challenges in particular from the security services and from the country’s stringent privacy laws.
Since 2009, France’s president has appointed the executives in charge of its public broadcasting outlets. This controversial measure was heavily criticised since, as it was seen as politicising public broadcasting and put into question its executives’ independence President Francois Hollande has promised to relinquish this privilege. He has also promised to review policies related to public broadcasting funding and management.
Another challenge for media freedom in France has been state intervention to prevent the exposure of corruption. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, former President Nicolas Sarkozy used the security services to identify the sources of leaks around the 2010 Liliane Bettencourt affair. In addition to accessing the phone records of a Le Monde journalist, journalists from major newspapers were also investigated. Not only did the chief of intelligence violate the confidentiality of journalistic sources, but he questioned the journalist’s right to investigate public corruption.
France’s privacy law is often described as the toughest in the world. This is because the publication of private details of someone’s life without their consent is a punishable offence, with limited public interest defences available. Privacy is safeguarded not only by civil law provisions but also by the existence of specific criminal offences which indirectly promote the withholding of information and self-censorship and limit the exposure of political corruption.
Digital Freedom
About 79.6% of the French population is online. Yet, digital freedom is curtailed by anti-terror laws, increased online surveillance and libel laws.
Online surveillance has been extended as a result of a 2011 anti-terror law[3] and Hadopi 2 (the law “promoting the distribution and protection of creative works on the Internet”) which is supposed to reduce illegal file downloading. Hadopi 2 makes it possible for content creators to pay private-sector companies to conduct online surveillance and filtering, creating a precedent for the privatisation of censorship. Another 2011 law requires internet service providers to hand over passwords to authorities if requested. Concerns have been raised over new legislation enabling the authorities to impose filters on the web without a court order and on the impact of new anti-terror laws that allows for the blocking of websites.
The French Press Freedom Law of 1881 – which guarantees freedom of expression for the press – has been amended so that it applies to online publication. It aims to extend the protections for press freedom online but also allows people to take legal action for libellous or hate speech online, including on blogs posts, tweets and Facebook comments. In October 2012, a French court ruled that Twitter should provide the identities of users who tweeted jokes deemed to be offensive to Muslims and Jews. This was after the Union of French Jewish Students threatened to bring the social media giant to court. During the course of the case, French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira said that it is a punishable offence to make racist or anti-Semitic comments online. There is pressure to reframe the 1881 Law on Press Freedom, which many consider “no longer adapted to new technologies”.
Artistic Freedom
France has a vibrant art scene but one restricted in various ways by hate speech laws and by interference from public authorities.
Racial hatred and other discriminatory and violent language in artistic work with a potentially large audience is criminalised as a “public expression offence”. Many artists have been brought to Court for this offence which lies mainly in Article 24 of the 1881 Law on Press Freedom.[4] This offence is particularly serious since it is punishable by five years’ imprisonment and a €45,000 fine. Government officials, civil society groups, and individuals have repeatedly sued artists for defamation and incitement to violence.
The Code of Intellectual Property protects artistic works whatever their content and merit, and protects their authors. However, artistic freedom of expression can be restricted by various authorities – Ministry of Culture, Superior Council of Audio-visual (Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, CSA) – whose decisions may limit not only the dissemination of works, but also their production (TV, films).The CSA for example, whose members are political appointments, is regularly exposed to pressure from the public, elected officials, or political authorities to censor artistic works.
[1] Loi n° 2004-228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics [Law of 15 March 2004, forbidding signs and clothing showing religious affiliation such as headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and oversized Christian crosses in public primary, secondary and higher education]
[2] Loi n° 2011-267 du 14 mars 2011 d’orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure [Law of 14 March 2011 on guidance and planning for the performance of domestic security]
[3] Décret n° 2011-219 du 25 février 2011 relatif à la conservation et à la communication des données permettant d’identifier toute personne ayant contribué à la création d’un contenu en ligne [Decree of 25 February 2011 on the conservation and communication of data to identify any person who contributed to the creation of online content]
[4] Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse, Version consolidée au 23 décembre 2012 [Law of 29 July 1881 on Press Freedom]
This article was originally published on 19 Aug, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression
08 Aug 13 | France, News and features, Politics and Society
Irène Frachon is a French pneumologist who discovered that an antidiabetic drug frequently prescribed for weight loss called Mediator was causing severe heart damage.
The French term “lanceur d’alerte” [literally: “alarm raiser”], which translates as “whistleblower”, was coined by two French sociologists in the 90’s and popularised by scientific André Cicolella, a whistleblower who was fired in 1994 from l’Institut national de recherche et de sécurité [the National institute for research and security] for having blown the whistle on the dangers of glycol ethers.
While the history of whistleblowing in the United States is closely associated with the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, exposing US government lies and helping to end the Vietnam war, whistleblowing in France was first associated with cases of scientists who raised the alarm over a health or an environmental risk.
In England, the awareness that whistleblowers needed protection grew in the early 1990s, after a series of accidents (among which the shipwreck of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise ferry, in 1987, which caused 193 deaths) when it appeared that the tragedies could have been prevented if employees had been able to voice their concerns without fear of losing their job. The Public Interest Disclosure Act, passed in 1998, is one of the most complete legal frameworks protecting whistleblowers. It still is a reference.
France had no shortage of national health scandals in the 1990s, from the case of HIV-contaminated blood to the case of growth hormone. But no legislation followed. For a long time, whistleblowers were at the center of a confusion: their action was seen as reminiscent of the institutionalised denunciations that took place under the Vichy regime when France was under Nazi occupation. In fact, no later than this year, some conservative MPs managed to defeat an amendment on whistleblowers’ protection by raising the spectre of Vichy.
For Marie Meyer, Expert of Ethical Alerts at Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO, this confusion makes little sense: “Whistleblowing is heroic, snitching cowardly”, she says.
“In France, the turning point was definitely the Mediator case, and Irène Frachon,” Meyer adds, referring to the case of a French pneumologist who discovered that an antidiabetic drug frequently prescribed for weight loss called Mediator was causing severe heart damage. In 2010, Frachon published a book – Mediator, 150mg, Combien de morts ? [“Mediator, 150mg, How Many Deaths?”] – where she recounted her long fight for the drug to be banned. Servier, the pharmaceutical company which produced the drug, managed to censor the title of the book and get it removed from the shelves two days after publication, before the judgement was overturned. Frachon has been essential in uncovering a scandal which is believed to have caused between 500 and 2000 deaths. With scientist André Cicolella, she has become one of the better-known French whistleblowers.
“What is striking is that people knew, whether in the case of PIP breast implants or of Mediator”, says Meyer. “You had doctors who knew, employees who remained silent, because they were scared of losing their job.”
This year, the efforts of various NGOs led by ex whistleblowers were finally met with results. Last January, France adopted a law (first proposed to the Senate by the Green Party) protecting whistleblowers for matters pertaining to health and environmental issues. The Cahuzac scandal, which fully broke in February and March, prompting the minister of budget to resign over Mediapart’s allegations that he had a secret offshore account, was instrumental in raising awareness and created the political will to protect whistleblowers.
For Meyer, France’s failure to protect whistleblowers employed in the public service has had direct consequences on the level of corruption in the country.
“Even if a public servant came to know that something was wrong with the financial accounts of a Minister, be it Cahuzac or someone else, how could he have had the courage to say it, and risk for his career and his life to be broken?” she says.
In June, as France discovered Edward Snowden’s revelations in the press over mass surveillance programs used by the National Security Agency, it started rediscovering its own whistleblowers: André Cicolella, Irène Frachon or Philippe Pichon, who was dismissed as a police commander in 2011 after his denunciations on the way police files were updated. Banker Pierre Condamin-Gerbier, a key witness in the Cahuzac case, was recently added to the list, when he was imprisoned in Switzerland on the 5th of July, two days after having been heard by the French Parliamentary Commission on the tax evasion case.
Three new laws protecting whistleblowers’ rights should be passed in the autumn. France will still be missing an independent body carrying out investigations into claims brought up by whistleblowerss, and an organisation to support them, like British charity Public Concern at Work does in the UK.
So far, French law doesn’t plan any particular protection to individuals who blow the whistle in the press, failing to recognise that, for a whistleblower, communicating with the press can be the best way to make a concern public – guaranteeing that the message won’t be forgotten, while possibly seeking to limit the reprisal against the messenger.
