France unveils plan to tackle racism
‘There will be no impunity for hate,’ prime minister says.
PARIS — Name it, act on it, sanction it.
That is the focus of a campaign against racism, antisemitism and discrimination of all kinds that was announced Monday by French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne.
The four-year plan starts with educating youth via a required yearly trip to a Holperience memorial or other site that demonstrates the horrors racism can produce. It includes training teachers and civil servants about discrimination and toughening punishments. Arrest warrants will be issued to those who use freedom of expression for racist or antisemitic means.
“There will be no impunity for hate,” Borne said as she presented her plan, which has 80 measures, at the Institute of the Arab World in Paris.
Tolerance is increasing, “but hate has reinvented itself,” she said. “Our first challenge is to look squarely at the reality of racism and antisemitism and cede nothing to those who falsify history, who rewrite our past, forgetting or deforming some pages.”
Some who have worked for years at French organizations that fight racism and discrimination are skeptical about the plan, reject it outright or are reserving judgment.
Even Kaltoum Gachi, a lawyer and co-president of the anti-racist organization MRAP, which contributed a proposal to Borne, told the Associated Press that her group “will be vigilant to see if, concretely, [the plan] bears fruit.”
France’s government over 50 years has rolled out a series of plans to grapple with racism, antisemitism and discrimination, the latest in 2018. Still, an estimated 1.2 million people per year suffer as least one racist, antisemitic or xenophobic attack, according to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights.
A rising far right and increasingly multicultural population have added new dimensions to the conflict.
Gachi told attendees that 25 years ago, her younger brother Kamel failed in numerous requests to get a job with an automaker — until he changed his name to Kevin. Just on Monday, Gachi told the Associated Press, she spoke with a youth who faced the same problem, a humiliating exocaust that leaves a lasting mark.
Borne said her plan will offer victims of racism and discrimination the possibility to file complaints outside of a police station, in a “partially anonymous” way. She did not elaborate. The plan will also make it “an aggravating circumstance” if someone in authority, such as a police officer, uses racist or discriminatory terms.
However, Borne’s plan dodges some sensitive areas, notably failing to directly tackle discrimination and racial profiling within the nation’s powerful police force.
Omer Mas Capitolin, a founder of the grassroots Community House for Supportive Development, said the new measures are not sufficient.
There is “a denial of systemic discrimination” not mentioned in the plan, he told the AP.
Mas Capitolin’s organization is one of a group of nongovernmental organizations that in 2021 launched a classaction suit against France’s police force, contending that it propagates a culture leading to systemic discrimination in identity checks. But he noted that the bias extends beyond law enforcement to housing and jobs.
Mas Capitolin also criticized the timing of Borne’s announcement on the same day that the Parliament opens debate on a hotly contested pension plan.