A tough new French counter-terrorism bill could have discriminatory repercussions, especially for Muslims, and puts the country’s human rights record at risk, UN experts have said, reports The Guardian.
The bill proposed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is designed to allow France to end its two-year state of emergency by transferring certain exceptional emergency policing powers into permanent law.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a special UN rapporteur, said the bill contains provisions that could harm the rights to liberty, security, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.
Another UN rapporteur, Michel Forst, warned that the bill, being debated by the French parliament, risked creating a “permanent emergency situation”, handing the state special policing powers without the proper control of judges and the legal system.
Forst told France Inter radio that the first people targeted by the law would be those simply “considered suspect”, including Muslims.
“The UN is watching France on this also because of France’s international impact and standing,” he said. “What France does is not trivial. We want France to do better so it doesn’t inspire bad practice in other countries.”
In a letter to the French authorities, the UN experts warned that the new anti-terrorism bill had a “vague definition of terrorism” that exacerbated fears that “emergency powers could be used in an arbitrary way”.
France has been living under a nationwide state of emergency since Islamic State jihadists struck Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people in a series of attacks on bars, restaurants, the national stadium and a rock gig at the Bataclan concert hall.
The special police powers granted under the state of emergency hark back to the Algerian war in the 1950s. The exceptional measures allow police to conduct house raids and searches without a warrant or judicial oversight, including at night, and give extra powers to officials to place people under house arrest outside the normal judicial process and to close places of worship. They also allow for restrictions on large gatherings.