French prime minister unveils plans to tackle racism
PARIS (AP) – Name it, act on it, sanction it.
That’s the focus of a new plan announced Monday by French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to end long-standing racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of all kinds.
The four-year plan begins educating youth with a mandatory annual trip to a Holocaust or other memorial site that exemplifies the horrors racism can provoke, because “history alarms the present,” the plan states. It includes training teachers and civil servants on discrimination and strengthening their ability to penalize those reported for discrimination.
Arrest warrants are issued against those who use freedom of expression for racist or anti-Semitic purposes.
Unusually, the plan includes combating discrimination against Gypsies and Roma.
“There will be no impunity for hatred,” said Borne, presenting her plans, including 80 measures, at the Arab World Institute.
Tolerance is increasing, “but hatred has reinvented itself,” she said.
“Our first challenge is to look closely at the reality of racism and anti-Semitism and leave nothing to those who falsify history, rewrite our past, forget some pages or distort it,” Borne added.
The French government has taken a number of measures to deal with racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination in recent years. Still, the estimated number of victims who have suffered at least one racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic attack is 1.2 million a year, according to the National Advisory Commission on Human Rights.
Social media and a rising far right, fearful of the disappearance of the nation’s Christian roots in an increasingly multicultural France, have added new dimensions to the fight against racism. Generations of citizens from former colonies in predominantly Muslim North and West Africa have given the nation a new face over the decades.
Kaltoum Gachi, co-president of the anti-racism organization MRAP, told the presentation that a 25-year-old family member named Kamel had failed in his long search for a job at an automaker – until he changed his name to Kevin.
Names, addresses and appearance have long been a barrier to people of non-French origin. Regular testing in private and public workplaces will be part of the new anti-discrimination effort, although the exact method is still being worked out.
Borne said her plan will also allow victims of racism and discrimination to lodge complaints outside of a police station and in a “partially anonymous” way. She didn’t elaborate.
Borne’s plan sidestepped some sensitive areas, notably failing to directly address discrimination and racial profiling within the country’s powerful police force.
