»Menschenrechte sind nicht verhandelbar«

Over 60 FIDH member organisations, including of course the French League of Human Rights, are particularly concerned about the situation of civil liberties and individual freedoms in France. All of our members were horrified by the terrorist attacks committed in 2015 in Paris and Saint Denis. Such acts of terrorism are being committed throughout the world and it is the responsibility of States to respond in such way as to protect the security and freedoms of all. FIDH and its member organisations, based on what will soon be a century of experience, assert that this battle must be waged while respecting human rights. Otherwise, it will become an attack on the very principles of democracy; thereby helping the criminals reach their goals.

That is why our organisations are particularly worried about the extension of the state of emergency, and even more so about its announced renewal effective 26 February. Almost all of the acts taken have been approved by administrative justice whose monitoring exercised after the fact has turned out to be largely insufficient, even ineffective, when it comes to searches. We point out further, that in the opinion of the very parliamentary mechanism which monitors the state of emergency, the modalities for action provided by the state of emergency are almost no longer used by the relevant services. What we deduce from this is that the remedies available under common law make it possible to deal with the current situation. Notwithstanding the support supposedly attributed to these reforms in opinion polls, we are gravely concerned that they could reinforce in people’s minds, and especially among the most vulnerable, a feeling of arbitrary power, and that they will foster acts of stigmatisation and discrimination and cause further social division. To say the least, it would be ironic that, in the guise of promoting national unity, the reforms undertaken would encourage the opposite, disunity, and ultimately only benefit the most extreme political forces in French society. Yet, that is our most profound concern regarding these reforms given the painful situations we have been monitoring in a number of countries since 11 September 2001. What is more, our organisations are calling for the non-renewal of the state of emergency, withdrawal of the constitutional reforms proposed, and a specific framework through strict respect for human rights of any reform undertaken and of any of France’s foreign policy relating to countering terrorism.

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