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Amid the tense political atmosphere gripping France as the pension reform crisis continues, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on Wednesday became the latest member of the Macron government to criticise the Human Rights League, one of France’s oldest NGOs, even accusing it of taking an “ambiguous” stance on Islamism in recent years. Her comments follow those of the interior minister, who suggested the group’s state subsidies should come under review given its recent criticism of the government.
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said during a Senate question-and-answer session on Wednesday that her opinion of the Human Rights League (Ligue des droits de l’Homme, or LDH) had changed. “I have a lot of respect for what LDH embodied in the past,” she said, but “I no longer understand some of its positions.”
Borne went on to say that some of her incomprehension stems from the league’s “ambiguities in the face of radical Islamism – and it has been reinforced over recent months”.
Borne appeared to be referring to actions such as the league’s support for the “march against Islamophobia” in late 2019. Some on the French left as well as the right viewed the name of the protest as an implicit contradiction of France’s belief in the right to criticise all religions, part of the France’s cherished value of secularism (laïcité). However, others insisted the march was against anti-Muslim discrimination, not against the critique of Islam.
It is highly unusual for a French leader to so strongly criticise one of the country’s oldest and best-known human rights NGOs. The League was founded in 1898, at the height of the 1894-1906 Dreyfus Affair – the greatest scandal of France’s Third Republic, concerning a Jewish army officer who was baselessly convicted of treason and the long struggle to exonerate him. The LDH has played a key role in French civil society ever since.
The Human Rights League came under fire in 2020 for declining to send a representative to the trial of those accused in the January 2015 jihadist attacks at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and Hypercasher kosher supermarkets, a landmark moment in France that eventually saw the suspects convicted and sentenced.
In recent weeks, the league has deployed citizen observers to the pension reform protests to document how security forces are maintaining order. Borne hailed the actions of police – whose actions have been criticised internationally as excessive – and suggested they were there to protect protesters. “Demonstrating is a fundamental right. It is not by excusing violence that we defend it… Much the contrary,” she said.
Controversy over protests
Borne went on to rail against LDH for critiquing attempts to prevent further unrest in Sainte-Soline, a village in western France that has seen violent clashes between police and demonstrators opposed to a huge reservoir project over its potential environmental impact. Referring to a ban on armes par destination – ordinary items that can be used as weapons such as cooking knives or baseball bats – Borne expressed annoyance at the league for “criticising an order preventing people from bringing weapons to Sainte-Soline”.
The LDH has said over recent weeks that it favours banning people from bringing weapons to the protests but argues that the government’s definition is unduly broad – and that its own narrower definition of the term accords with that of France’s constitution.
Critics have accused the French police of using excessively forceful methods against protesters at Sainte-Soline. Scenes of violence there on March 25 fuelled the sense of turmoil in France, as they came amid clashes between protesters and police during the pension reform demonstrations taking place across the country. The violence at the March 23 pension reform demonstrations attracted particular international attention – with Bordeaux town hall set on fire and more than 149 police and gendarmes injured, according to the French authorities.
Interior minister’s subsidy warning
In her remarks on Wednesday, Borne also cited “many other NGOs” who also “do not understand” the LDH’s positions – referring to a letter sent on Tuesday by the head of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme, or LICRA) to the head of the Consultative Commission on Human Rights, another longstanding French rights NGO.
The LICRA president’s letter criticised the LDH for feeding into a sense that “the authorities are the public enemy No. 1” and warning of the risk of violence being “legitimised” when it is directed against representatives of the French state.
The controversy over Borne’s statements follows earlier outrage over comments from right-wing Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin during another Senate question time on April 5. In response to a senator from the conservative Les Républicains party who called for an “end to state funding for associations that seriously undermine the state”, Darmanin declared that the state subsidy given to LDH “should be looked into in light of their actions”.
Various left-wing politicians joined LDH’s president Patrick Baudouin in strongly criticising Darmanin’s remarks.
The interior minister’s declaration also prompted a petition in communist newspaper L’Humanité signed by 1,000 public figures – including an array of leftist politicians, trade union leaders and prominent names in the arts – saying, “Don’t touch the LDH!”
“Public subsidies are essential to guaranteeing associations’ independence and protecting them from the whims of those in power,” the petition read. “Calling these subsidies into question is a way to get rid of checks and balances and extinguish public debate.”
Borne adopted a softer approach than Darmanin – tempering her criticism of LDH by saying that “cutting subsidies to particular associations” is “not on the cards” and that she hopes human rights NGOs will “continue their monitoring activities”.
But she added that government also “has a responsibility to talk to NGOs about what they are doing when they get government funding”.
LDH chief Baudouin responded furiously to Borne’s Wednesday remarks, saying he was “surprised” and “appalled” by what he saw as her “distortions” of the group’s positions. Baudouin called on the PM to “calm the debate instead of making things worse”.
Left-wing politicians joined Baudouin in condemning her remarks. Green Party Senator David Salmon accused the government of “blackmail” over the comments on public subsidies for LDH, saying such a stance could lead to a “time when people no longer have the right to question the government’s policies”.
The prime minister is keen to “avoid disowning” Darmanin, said Eliane Assassi, the Communist Party leader in the Senate, who asked Borne the question that prompted her comments on LDH.
But some politicians on the right voiced agreement with Borne’s – and Darmanin’s – approach. Bruno Retailleau, the Les Républicains leader in the Senate, notably urged the government to “cut [LDH’s] subsidies” – saying the NGO “undoubtedly had a noble past, a glorious past”, but is now “losing itself in far-left squabbling”.
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