VOICE
Paris
Is on Wartime Footing
Three
months after the Islamic State attacks, France is on the verge of
declaring a state of emergency, forever.
BY LEELA JACINTO /
FEBRUARY 9, 2016
What a difference a
year makes. Just 12 little months and the spirit of solidarity after
the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks — which drew millions to the
streets across France — is dead.
The first
anniversary of the three-day terrorism spree came and went with a
clutch of senior officials and invited guests gathering at Place de
la République in the heart of Paris while aging French rocker Johnny
Hallyday crooned, “One Sunday in January.” While residents going
about their daily business maneuvered around security blocks, the
press picked desultory quotes from the handful of people at the
square about “mixed feelings,” with one 54-year-old museum
technician noting, “It is terrible to attack journalists, but it’s
scary to live under a state of emergency.”
Weeks later,
thousands of demonstrators gathered at Place de la République to
protest the proposed extension of France’s new wartime footing.
Braving the pelting rain, protesters chanted, “Stop the state of
emergency!” and “State of emergency — police state!”
But there’s no
stopping French President François Hollande’s government now, and
everyone at the square on that cold, wet Saturday in January knew
that well.
A 1955 legal
provision instituted during the brutal Algerian war of independence,
the state of emergency was introduced for an initial 12-day period in
the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which killed
130 people. Barely a week later, the French Parliament voted to
extend the law for another three months to Feb. 26.
The state of
emergency looks set for a further extension, giving the government
time to raise its “tough on terrorism” fever to new heights.The
state of emergency looks set for a further extension, giving the
government time to raise its “tough on terrorism” fever to new
heights.
On Feb. 8, the
National Assembly approved the first article of a draft
constitutional amendment that would see the state of emergency
measure — which exists as a separate law — enshrined in the
French Constitution. The late Monday night vote, by an overwhelming
103 to 26 votes, was the first in a series of steps before the
constitution is finally amended, a process that should take weeks as
the package of measures moves from the lower to the upper houses of
Parliament. The procedure may be complicated, but the implication is
clear: Enshrining the state of emergency provision in the
constitution gives the executive branch extraordinary powers — at
the cost of the judiciary — since it protects the measure from
legal challenges.
A constitutional
amendment — fancy that! At the Davos summit last month, when French
Prime Minister Manuel Valls was asked how long he proposed extending
the state of emergency, he replied, “as long as the threat is
there.” Given that the jihadi threat is not going anywhere anytime
soon, this effectively means … forever. At this rate, France is
beginning to make the likes of George W. Bush and his infamous legal
advisor Alberto Gonzales seem like a bunch of cheese-eating surrender
monkeys.
Another major
amendment will see French-born nationals stripped of their
citizenship if they are convicted in terrorism cases. The
controversial nationality-stripping provision has sparked a season of
French political high drama, complete with the resignation of Justice
Minister Christiane Taubira, who opposed the measure.
France has a history
of terrorist attacks followed by tightened anti-terrorism laws dating
back to the mid-1990s, when Algerian Islamist militants, incensed at
Paris’s perceived support of the Algerian military junta, conducted
a series of attacks on French soil.
Following the 2012
Toulouse shootings, when lone gunman Mohamed Merah killed seven
people in southern France, a new anti-terrorism law cracking down on
French nationals training in overseas terrorist camps was passed. The
law provided authorities sweeping powers to monitor telephone and
Internet data, but it did nothing to stem the tide of Frenchmen
traveling to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and the new jihadi
badlands of Syria. Shortly after the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo
attacks, Parliament rushed through a new round of tough
anti-terrorism laws — dubbed “the French Patriot Act” — which
included travel bans on anyone suspected of planning a jihadi trip
abroad.
They failed
miserably, of course. On Nov. 13, 2015, 130 people were killed in and
around Paris in the first terrorist attacks in a Western country to
be officially claimed by the Islamic State. The Paris ringleader,
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a well-known jihadi who “starred” in a
number of grisly video clips, including one featuring him driving an
SUV towing corpses through the Syrian desert. The Belgium-born jihadi
frequently boasted about how he could blithely cross European borders
and that Belgian and French authorities were useless.
He was right.
Abaaoud had managed to re-enter France, participate in the Nov. 13
terrorism spree, and remain parked under the noses of the French
intelligence services in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, where he
was finally found and killed days after the attacks following a
tipoff from Moroccan intelligence. The drumbeat of French security
failures has been steady and has at times risen to almost farcical
levels, as I noted back in 2014, when three dangerous suspects
returning from Islamic State-controlled parts of Syria “got lost”
in the French countryside.
After a year
bookended by deadly terrorist attacks conducted by familiar jihadi
figures, no official heads have rolled, no one has been sacked, and
not a single senior official or minister has been hauled over the
coals.
Instead, the
Hollande administration has been pushing new anti-terrorism measures,
despite howls of condemnation from U.N. special rapporteurs and the
European Council secretary-general, as well as French and
international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch.
They’re pissing in
the wind, this civil liberties crowd. The horse has already bolted
while French lawmakers in the coming weeks tinker with the stable
hinges. Even before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, French anti-terrorism
laws were so tight, they didn’t need further tightening — they
simply had to be put to better use.Even before the Charlie Hebdo
attacks, French anti-terrorism laws were so tight, they didn’t need
further tightening — they simply had to be put to better use. Under
the controversial 1996 anti-terrorism statute known as association de
malfaiteurs terroriste, or “terrorist criminal association,”
thousands have been arrested and hundreds convicted. Prosecutors have
sought and won convictions not by proving the existence of a
terrorist plot, but by simply showing “participation in a grouping
or an agreement established with a view to the preparation” of a
terrorist act.
Defense lawyers
complain their clients have been declared guilty of “address book”
crimes. Worse, this paint-by-numbers scheme only accelerated the flow
of young, mostly Muslim, men into notorious French prisons such as
Fleury-Mérogis, where, ironically, they have associated with
hardened criminals-turned-jihadis, emerging from the system more
dangerous than they were before they entered. It’s a recurring
pattern in French jihadis’ profiles, one that has created
radicalized networks that have included the Charlie Hebdo gunmen,
Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, and their friend Amedy Coulibaly, who
attacked a Paris kosher supermarket.
The latest
post-attack security rethink takes police powers to new heights.
Since the state of emergency was declared in November, police have
conducted more than 3,200 house searches without warrants, imposed
some 400 assigned residence (a form of house arrest) orders, and
closed numerous mosques and businesses. That’s a heck of a lot of
French lives — overwhelmingly Muslim lives — disrupted. These
include people who now say they have been fired from jobs due to the
stigma of a house search or arrest, though that was never cited as
the reason for dismissal. Those placed on assigned residency have to
report to a police station as often as three times a day and require
special permission to travel beyond a certain area. All these house
searches and arrests have resulted in the launch of only 25 criminal
investigations, of which 21 were under an “apology of terrorism”
offense — which is actually a poor apology of a law.
A Feb. 4 Amnesty
International report, titled “Upturned Lives: The Disproportionate
Impact of France’s State of Emergency,” provides damning insight
into the recent excesses and violations committed by the authorities.
The 40-page report cites a number of cases, including a jaw-dropping
police search of a women’s shelter on Dec. 8. The only official at
the shelter that night was a young woman, identified as Virginie, who
“did not understand why the shelter had been searched,” the
report dryly notes. Neither can I, for that matter.
What’s the purpose
of conducting an intrusive, terrifying night search on a shelter
housing abused women?What’s the purpose of conducting an intrusive,
terrifying night search on a shelter housing abused women? To figure
out if they were associated with the suspicious males they are now
trying to flee? Media reports quoted French officials as saying the
shelter, run by an association called Baytouna, houses women whose
husbands went to fight in Syria. Baytouna, which means “our house”
in Arabic, denies the charges. But the police seem willing to play
the spin game — in one case, the media duly reported that firearms
were found in a mosque in the Parisian suburb of Lagny-sur-Marne,
which was then shut down. The official police report, however, said
nothing was found at the mosque and no criminal investigation was
launched. Even if the accusations against the Baytouna shelter were
true, women abandoned by husbands fighting in Syria do not constitute
an immediate security threat to France.
The state of
emergency has raised widespread concerns of further stigmatization
and discrimination of France’s already marginalized Muslims. This,
as security and human rights experts note, is not helpful. “Practices
that discriminate against Muslims are counterproductive as well as
reprehensible and unlawful, alienating French Muslims and undermining
cooperation between Muslim communities and law enforcement efforts
that could assist in identifying local terrorism threats based on
radical Islam,” said a Human Rights Watch statement. Focusing on
mosques and Muslim community associations makes little sense: Islamic
State ideologues exhort young people to avoid mosques and community
centers where Muslim community elders have little sympathy for its
nihilist brand of Islamism. The new pattern of individualized
radicalization has also been well established with leading French
Islamic studies expert Olivier Roy noting that “radicalisation is a
youth revolt against society.… It is not the uprising of a Muslim
community victim of poverty and racism.”
Every single French
official and policy expert I have spoken to is aware of Roy’s
research findings and has carefully read his Nov. 24 Le Monde column,
“Jihadism is a generational and nihilistic revolt.” But they
can’t seem to translate that into policy. Or they don’t want to.
And there’s a simple reason for this.
It’s political
high season in France, and all eyes are on the 2017 presidential
election. Political party pundits are reading from the same hymnal,
which maintains there’s a “droitisation” — or rightward lurch
— in the public mood. Party bosses are straining so far right,
they’re starting to topple over.Party bosses are straining so far
right, they’re starting to topple over.
When Nicolas Sarkozy
was president, he proposed a “déchéance de nationalité” — or
stripping of French nationality — in terrorism cases, which was
greeted by howls of protest and petitions signed by leftist
intellectuals and politicians such as Hollande and Valls. The most
public proponent of the measure in government today? Monsieur Valls.
Droitisation has a
way of pushing ideals to the winds. The déchéance de nationalité
drama is so juicy, it threatens to overshadow the deeper issues at
play. With schisms in the ruling Socialist Party, high-profile
resignations, political backtracking, and even a confusion over
whether the measure applies only to dual nationals or all French
nationals and how that upholds under international law, the press has
its plate full.
Buried in this
deluge is the fundamental principle of executive power overriding
judicial checks and balances. One of the more troubling developments
over the past few months has been a steady stream of appeals against
the state of emergency that have been overruled by the Conseil
d’État, or Council of State, the country’s highest
administrative court. These include an appeal by environmental
activists during the U.N. conference on climate change (COP21) in
Paris against the assigned residence of some activists under the
state of emergency provisions. The Conseil d’État ruled in favor
of the Interior Ministry’s argument that environmental protests
could disturb the public order — even though the house arrests and
protest bans were not aimed at “preventing the commission of
further acts of terrorism.” Then, on Jan. 27, the Conseil d’État
rejected an appeal by the Paris-based Human Rights League to suspend
the state of emergency.
These are just some
of the more high-profile cases that have made the news. The cases of
ordinary French Muslims losing their appeals against assigned
residency orders rarely make headlines. But they have been systematic
enough for Amnesty International to warn that “[a]dministrative
courts and the Council of State have very rarely challenged the
information included in the notes collected by the intelligence
services” and that “courts had tended to show strong deference to
the arguments put forward by the Ministry of Interior.”
The Hollande
administration’s move to declare a state of emergency may have been
justifiable in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.
Three months later, it’s time to sit back and assess which measures
are necessary and which ones are a distraction, hogging time and
resources while the real business of improving intelligence,
implementing existing laws, and addressing the social malaise
underlying youth radicalization is being ignored. But that’s not
going to happen, of course. In France, as in too many other
countries, high political drama always trumps substantive policy
rethinks. Let the political games begin.
Photo credit:
GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP/Getty Images
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