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Did Le Pen win the elections?A Frenchman returning to his country after having lived abroad for a while could be forgiven for believing that the Far-Right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen had won the 2002 presidential elections after all. Despite the French government's very popular anti-war stance, not all is well at home. Since being elected by 80% of the votes in 2002, President Jacques Chirac has been trying to convince the public that he represents ALL the French people. He conveniently forgets that most of those who voted for him were actually just trying to make sure that Jean Marie Le Pen didn't come to power. They needn't have bothered. The first victims of the new regime were the "illegal" immigrants, the traditional scapegoats for all of France's woes. The interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy (his surname hints at Eastern-European origins) has been busy trying to scare the public with exaggerated figures of asylum seekers whilst striving to appear as a "moderate" when it comes to immigration (1). However, the reason there are so many "illegal" immigrants in France is because this "moderate" takes a narrow and restrictive view of what consists a "legal" migrant. But most controversial of all is the new anti-crime law recently passed by the French Parliament. This targets those already excluded from society, such as prostitutes and beggars, and creates a new crime of "loitering". Instead of trying to better the conditions of sex workers who are already victims of criminal networks, the new law strips them of any remaining protection. In this "internal security" law, Sarkozy puts prostitutes at risk of two months in jail and a fine of 3750 euros for "passive soliciting" (which if loosely interpreted could involve wearing "provocative" clothing). This would drive these vulnerable women underground, where they would be at the mercy of their pimps, and of violent clients, and unable to turn to the police for protection from these individuals. This law also destroys the efforts of charities which have worked so hard to protect sex workers from AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases(2), because it will become more difficult to get help to these women if they are in hiding. By penalising the victims, and not the clients, by stripping sex workers of their basic human rights, Sarkozy is happily furthering the Le Pen agenda. This was enough to shock civil right groups, but the law goes further, following the "victimise the victim" principle: youths found loitering in stairwells (i.e. just talking with their friends) can face up to two months in prison! Nobody has any illusions as to who will suffer most from this new regulation. Indeed, youths of immigrant descents in the run-down council estates have very little else to do than "loiter". So much for all the talk of helping young Arabs to integrate into French society. As if that weren't enough, there is more. The new government has set out to exacerbate nationalism as an excuse for all sorts of encroachments on civil liberties. Following an event at a football match where French youths of Algerian origin booed the national anthem, the government found nothing better to do than to pass a new law prohibiting collective insults to the "Marseillaise" or the French flag(3). "Offenders" can be punished by a fine of up to 7500 Euros(4), and can even be jailed for six months! Le Pen must have been overjoyed. One wonders how this gross attack on the basic human right of freedom of expression can ever make the Arabic immigrants or anyone but the most fanatical nationalists feel more "French". Moreover, this law is most likely to target youths of foreign origin, who already have great trouble integrating into a society which works so hard to exclude them. Instead of passing laws forcing people to worship the flag and anthem, the government had better repeal their repressive "anti-crime" laws, which ride on a wave of popular fear at the intangible phenomenon of "insecurity", a concept invented by the Right to win the last elections. The French flag and anthem have no inherent right to be respected; they may represent the ideals of the Revolution, but they were also the symbols of the soldiers who tortured and killed so many innocent people in the Algerian war, and of the collaborationist Vichy government. Respect for national symbols must be earned, it cannot be enforced. References and related articles 1- Ferré,
N. 2003. Nicolas Sarkozy et les sans-papiers: faire peur et tromper.
Le
Monde. 24/01/03 |
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