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in wake of paris
Turkey's Post-Coup Crackdown Puts Human Rights on the Chopping Block
Turkey imposes three-month state of emergency and temporarily suspends European Convention on Human Rights in latest move after failed uprising
Jul 21, 2016
Turkey has imposed a three-month state of emergency and temporarily suspended the European Convention on Human Rights as the government continues to crack down on dissent in the wake of last week's failed military coup.
Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Turkey would follow France's lead on responding to issues of national security. The suspension was announced Thursday amid escalating concerns that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would try to use the uprising to curtail civil liberties and human rights.
The state of emergency allows the president and the cabinet to rule largely by decree, bypassing Parliament to restrict or block freedoms as they deem necessary. That may include imposing curfews, conducting unwarranted searches, banning gatherings or protests, or restricting media.
As the BBC's Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen explains:
The government insists it will not affect the daily life of citizens and that the state of emergency will only root out the "virus" behind the coup. It points out that similar measures are in France since the Paris attacks last November.
[....] But given the criticism of the president for curbing both while in office, doubts persist over how an increasingly authoritarian leader will use this, especially given the recent purges.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Erdogan said he "would like to underline that the declaration of the state of emergency has the sole purpose of taking the necessary measures, in the face of the terrorist threat that our country is facing."
The "virus in the military will be cleansed," he said, referring to alleged supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a prominent government critic whom Erdogan has blamed for the coup. Gulen has denied involvement.
About 250 people were killed and hundreds were wounded last week when troops shut down the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul and deployed military planes to key government buildings in Ankara. Soldiers who took part in the coup attempt later told interrogators they had been told by commanding officers it was a military exercise.
Tens of thousands of people have been arrested or fired since the coup attempt, including soldiers, teachers, judges, government personnel, and high-ranking military officials. More than 600 schools have been closed and national authorities have promised to set up "a special court for trying coup plotters" as well as "a special prison" for those convicted.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the state of emergency was a targeted effort to prevent another coup, but the announcement follows warnings from observers that Turkey's response to the uprising will be a test of its commitment to human rights.
"While the government has the complete right to hold to account those involved in the coup, the speed and scale of the arrests, including of top judges, suggests a purge rather than a process based on any evidence," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement earlier this week. "Turkey's citizens who took to the streets to defend democracy deserve a response that upholds the rule of law and protects media freedom."
As the Independent noted, "There have been concerns in Turkey that the move will see a return to the days of martial law after a 1980 military coup, or the height of a Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s."
Erdogan also said Thursday that "Europe does not have the right to criticize this decision."
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A Mass Murderer Becomes a 'Terrorist'-Based on Ethnicity, Not Evidence
The New York Times (7/15/16), writing about the man who reportedly killed 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France, provided no evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was motivated by either politics or religion to commit violence--yet still labeled the murders as "terrorism," as though the definition of that crime were based on ethnicity rather than motivation.
Jul 17, 2016
The New York Times (7/15/16), writing about the man who reportedly killed 84 people in a truck attack in Nice, France, provided no evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was motivated by either politics or religion to commit violence--yet still labeled the murders as "terrorism," as though the definition of that crime were based on ethnicity rather than motivation.
Times correspondent Andrew Higgins wrote that Lahouaiej Bouhlel
was known to his neighbors only as a moody and aggressive oddball. He never went to the local mosque, often grunted in response to greetings of "bonjour" and sometimes beat his wife -- until she threw him out....
Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel appeared not to have left behind any public declaration of his motive or indicated any allegiance to the Islamic State or another extremist group....
Residents in his former apartment building on a hill overlooking the city said they had never seen him at the local mosque and never heard him mention religion.
Indeed, they said he rarely spoke at all and seemed to be in a permanent haze of anger, particularly after his marriage fell apart.
The militant group ISIS issued a statement praising the attack, but as the Times story reported,
it remained unclear whether the claim of support was an effort by the Islamic State, also know as ISIS or ISIL, to associate itself with a high-profile attack without having been involved in its planning or having any direct contact with Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Despite the absence of any evidence of a political motivation, or indeed any motive at all--generally considered to be a key part of any definition of terrorism--the Times story still referred to the Nice killings as "the third large-scale act of terrorism in France in a year and a half." The killings, Higgins wrote, "raised new questions throughout the world about the ability of extremists to sow terror."
Why is the Times willing to label the Nice deaths "terrorism"--a label that US media do not apply to all acts of mass violence, even ones that have much clearer political motives (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/15/14)? In part, they seem to be following the lead of French authorities: "French officials labeled the attack terrorism and cast the episode as the latest in a series that have made France a battlefield in the violent clash between Islamic extremists and the West."
But quotes from French officials made it clear that such claims were little more than guesswork: The story reported that Prime Minister Manuel Valls "said the attacker in all likelihood had ties to radical Islamist circles," citing Valls' statement to French TV: "He is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another." Later Valls is quoted noting that the attack happened on the French national holiday of Bastille Day:
Why on the 14th of July? Because it is a celebration of freedom. It was, therefore, indeed to affect France that the individual committed this terrorist attack.
French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, "was more cautious," the Times reported: "We have an individual who was not at all known by the intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islamism," Cazeneuve was quoted.
Why was the Times not similarly cautious about applying the label of "terrorism" to an act whose motives it admitted knowing nothing about? It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Times believes that when the suspect is an Arab--Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant--then allegations of terrorism require no evidence whatsoever.
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At Least 84 Dead as France Reels from Attack in Nice
At least 84 have been killed, another 50 seriously injured, and many others hurt after truck hits crowd
Jul 15, 2016
Scores of people were killed in Nice, France late Thursday night when a truck rammed into a crowd that had gathered for Bastille Day, in what officials say was a deliberate attack.
At least 84 have been killed, another 50 seriously injured, and many others hurt.
The Guardian is providing live updates here.
The truck slammed into the crowd shortly after a fireworks display celebrating the French national holiday ended around 11pm in the southern coastal city, reportedly swerving and zigzagging for two kilometers (1.24 miles) in an apparent attempt to hit more people.
According to the local paper Nice Matin, the driver also fired on the crowd while ramming through it. He was eventually shot dead by police, who searched the truck and found it was loaded with ammunition and grenades.
The attack has not been claimed by any group or organization.
Reuters reports on the driver's identity:
An attacker who drove a heavy truck into crowds in the French city of Nice killing at least 84 people came from the Tunisian town of Msaken which he last visited four years ago, Tunisian security sources said on Friday.
The man, identified by French police sources as 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not known by the Tunisian authorities to hold radical or Islamist views, the sources said.
Bouhlel was married with three children, they said. The sources did not say when he had last been resident in Tunisia.
It is the latest in a string of attacks to hit France in recent months. Around the world, people gathered to express their sympathy and solidarity, holding vigils and placing flowers in front of their French embassies. U.S. President Barack Obama said he condemned the attack "in the strongest terms."
French President Francois Hollande declared three national days of mourning and extended the country's state of emergency--still in place since November's attack on the headquarters of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo--by another three months. He also said France was "tightening up its borders" and that military officials would deploy another 10,000 army reservists to patrol the streets of France, while "activities will be strengthened" in Iraq and Syria.
The controversial state of emergency allows police to conduct unwarranted house raids and empowers officials to place individuals under house arrest.
That response received some guarded criticism from journalists and security experts who pointed to the futility of the so-called "War on Terror."
As Zoe Chapman noted at Just Security on Friday:
The lorry attack comes just as the French government was preparing to relax the state of emergency. If it transpires it was a terror attack, it would represent a breakdown of the "vast security dragnet" France erected following November's Islamic State-sponsored mass killings.
And Simon Jenkins wrote for the Guardian:
Such responses may comfort the citizens of Nice in their state of shock. But there is no defense force on Earth that can defend a crowd from a madman in a truck.
[....] Hollande might more usefully have called up 10,000 psychologists or 10,000 Islamic historians. As for strengthening France's role in the Islamist civil wars in Iraq and Syria, it is hard to imagine anything more likely to incite other young men to suicide attacks.
The Guardian's Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis adds that the attack "constitutes a crisis for Hollande's premiership."
"What has happened in France is tragic and calls for human sympathy," Jenkins concluded. "Beyond that, there is nothing we can usefully do--other than make matters worse."
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Paris, Orlando and Turkey: Displacing the Narrative of Western Innocence
Jul 01, 2016
What is clear is that there is a context—no matter how painful to admit—of U.S. and Western complicity in creating the very forces that now terrorize the imagination of the Western public. Just a cursory glance at that sordid history reveals the baselessness of the assumption of innocence that underlies the dominant narrative pushed by the corporate press in the U.S. and inculcated as a part of Western commonsense.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor, congratulated himself on his brilliant strategy to create the "Soviet Union's Vietnam" by bogging it down militarily in Afghanistan with the creation of an international corps of right-wing Islamists ready to fight the godless Soviets. Like all colonialist calculations, the Pentagon thought that these elements could be weaponized to do the bidding of U.S. and Western imperialism. They mistakenly believed that once the mission was completed that they could conveniently toss them aside like the Hmong in Vietnam, the Gurkhas from Nepal, the black Buffalo soldiers in the West of the U.S. - the list goes on. With direct logistical support from the Pakistani ISI, the Mujahedeen performed marvelously, destroying a secular nationalist government with Marxist leanings and plunging the nation into the chaos that led to the establishment of the Taliban who created their 8th century version of an Islamic state.
When Brzezinski formulated his plan, critics of this strategy, including some elements of the U.S. and British intelligence agencies, warned that the U.S. was playing a dangerous game by empowering what had always been the lunatic fringe of Islam, but colonial hubris inoculated those decision makers in 1979 and in both the Bush and Obama administrations from those more critical reassessments. They operated instead from a historical perspective in which the use of right-wing Islamists had yielded positive results not only in Afghanistan in the 1980's but also before that during the immediate post-world-war years to undercut support for left and left nationalist forces in the so-called Middle East.
These kinds of cynical calculations have always been a cornerstone of colonial "divide and rule" politics. However, what Brzezinski and others didn't understand was the subjective factor that they were dealing with. Unlike the slimy comprador and mercenary types traditionally used to advance Western interests in various parts of the world, the religious fervor and commitment of these Islamic elements could not be turned on and off.
By concentrating these forces in Afghanistan, U.S. policy gave them an opportunity to gain valuable training, fighting experience, and some degree of prestige along with more effective post-conflict networking among themselves. They created a force in which the tail would eventually wag the dog, with the al-Qaeda network was just one of the networks of radical Islamists that emerged from that period.
This was evident when the Bush administration and then the Obama administration decided to re-empower these radical jihadists as part of their strategy to put pressure on the al-Maliki government in Iraq and effect governmental change in Syria. In short, they encouraged a jihadist invasion and then framed it as a "civil war." Western governments pretended not to notice and certainly didn't seem to care in the early days of the war that more and more of their nationals were traveling to Turkey to enter the conflict zone in Syria.
Why this lack of concern?
U.S. propagandists knew that the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) was their public relations myth. Many analysts in the U.S. intelligence agencies concluded early on that if the Assad government was going to be toppled, it would come about as a result of the Jihadist forces being created internally and pouring into the country from abroad.
In a moment of unusual candor, President Obama revealed that he thought it was a fantasy that the FSA could overthrow the Syrian government and the Baath institutional apparatus. Many critics of Obama's strategies in Syria thought that this was an insult to the "moderates" and critiqued the Obama administration's reluctance to provide support to the FSA. But instead of that comment reflecting the bogus narrative of non-support for the forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian government by the U.S., it revealed instead what was really in place - a strategy to bolster Islamic jihadist forces working with and through Turkey, the Saudi's, and the other Gulf monarchs and repressive states in the region, including Israel.
With the CIA fully involved in training and equipping what was referred to as the "rebel" forces and with the assurances from Saudi Prince Bander that they had the jihadists fully under their control, the Administration didn't appear to be too concerned when ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and began to establish its own independent economic base once it captured the oil fields in Syria. It all seemed like part of the plan, especially when it became clear that NATO member Turkey was being used to get the Syrian oil to world markets.
Michael Flynn, the frustrated head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who naively thought that the U.S. was concerned about "Islamic terrorism," revealed recently that after the DIA submitted analysis in 2012 that U.S. policies in Syria were enhancing the power of Islamic forces and leading to the establishment of a "Salafist principality" not only was that analysis ignored, it became clear to him that the Obama administration had made a "willful decision to do what they were doing."
But this Frankensteinian strategy turned farce into disaster when ISIS double-crossed their benefactors by breaking the rules and attacking the "good Kurds" in Iraq. The strategy appeared to be more concerned with holding territory in Iraq and Syria than carrying out their assignment to overthrow the Assad government and completing the dismemberment of the Syrian state - the strategic objective of U.S. and Israeli policy to counter the regional power of the Iranians.
With the categorical transformation of jihadist forces in Syria into "moderates" and their military enhancement with U.S.-supplied anti-tank weapons and better military and political coordination, the stage was set by the summer of 2015 for the last push after a no-fly zone was established. This move would have allowed coordinated ground operations with air power provided by the U.S., with symbolic participation from France and Britain, to give the operation its NATO credentials. Under this configuration and shift in the balance of forces, ISIS had outlived its utility for U.S. interests and became an obstacle because of its independent agenda. So it had to be cut down to size - not destroyed - at least not at that point.
But the rhetorical commitment to eliminate ISIS created a political/ideological opening for the Russians to be invited in by the Syrian government to "counter" ISIS. The result was to completely undermine the no-fly zone plan and the plan to support a final push on to Damascus by the newly concentrated Islamic forces in the form of the Jaish al-Fatah or the "Army of Conquest," as the new "moderates."
With the combined attacks by the Russians and U.S., the ISIS caliphate has constricted in size. In particular, some of the combatants from the West have left the battlefield and slowly tricked back to the West. Battled hardened and still committed to the cause, the strategic shift appears to be focused on taking the battle to the West, something that Abu Baka al-Baghdadi, an alleged former CIA asset and subsequent leader of ISIS, warned would happen if they were targeted.
The series of attacks in Paris, Brussels, Turkey, and Orlando reflect what Malcolm called the "chickens coming home to roost." Innocent human beings are the ones that suffer the consequences of imperial policy. From the tens of thousands of displaced Syrians who found themselves as political pawns in the manufactured "refugee crisis" in Europe to the Puerto Rican patrons of Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it is the people who suffer when these destructive forces unleashed on the world by their Western governments double back on their masters and bring the terror "home."
This "blowback" theory is controversial especially among some who view all of these attacks as part of some grand design to manipulate public opinion to support the permanent war strategy being operationalized across the planet in the name of fighting terrorism. While the forces of domination can tactically take advantage of these attacks to further that agenda, the position that this is all part of a grand plan gives those forces a ubiquity and level of competence among the people making policy that the evidence of how policy is developed and executed does not support.
There are already calls being made in some quarters for a more forceful intervention into Syria to crush ISIS in response to the attack in Turkey. Erdogan, the neo-Ottoman maniac who leads Turkey, declared with a straight face and not a hint of irony that the world must double its effort to defeat international terrorism.
Not supporting terrorism was precisely the demand that many Turkish citizens made to Erdogan before this attack. And like many of the innocents in the U.S. who have died from 9/11 to Orlando who probably opposed U.S. state terrorism, I am sure that many of the Turkish citizens who were murdered or wounded in that airport probably also opposed the immoral and fundamentally dangerous policies of their government in Syria. Their families and all of the people of Turkey should be outraged. As should the people of the U.S. whose government is now seen by so many people of the world as the greatest threat to world peace and as Dr. King declared the "greatest purveyor of violence" on the planet.
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From Paris to Istanbul, More 'War on Terror' Means More Terrorist Attacks
As ISIS loses territory, it returns to mass-casualty attacks against civilians. That's why military-first approaches to terrorism are doomed to failure.
Jun 29, 2016
At least 41 people were killed in the recent bombing of Istanbul's Ataturk Airport.
The day before, suicide bombers killed five people in Qaa, a small village in Lebanon. And while the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed war in Yemen continues to rage, an ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility for attacks in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla that killed at least 12.
"If we're serious about ending terror attacks, there are a host of non-military approaches that hold far more promise than bomb-drone-kill."
As of June 29, ISIS affiliates had claimed responsibility only for the Yemen attacks. But just a few hours after the Istanbul airport attack, Turkish authorities were already blaming ISIS. Since Ankara (unlike the U.S., where many officials blame ISIS for every act of violence) has been eager to blame every attack against Turkish targets on its Kurdish opponents -- especially the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK -- the government's early willingness to blame ISIS implies the likely existence of some convincing evidence.
Importantly, all three attacks took place following a significant defeat of ISIS on the ground.
The Iraqi military, backed by U.S. forces, had been moving against the extremist forces in the symbolically and politically important city of Fallujah since early February, when it imposed a full siege on the city. The closure, which denied civilian residents access to food, medicine, and other life-saving supplies, devastated living conditions for the ordinary Iraqis caught between ISIS brutality and the extreme deprivation caused by the siege. On June 26 -- just days before the bombings in Istanbul, Lebanon, and Yemen -- Baghdad proclaimed the city "liberated" from ISIS. Two days later, the Istanbul airport was attacked.
The timing was similar to other terrorist attacks that occurred as ISIS was losing ground. In the fall of 2015, the U.S.-led coalition, including many European countries, escalated its bombing attacks on the ISIS-held city of Ramadi. As ISIS faced the likely loss of the Iraqi town, it pivoted away from its emphasis on holding territory to return to its earlier focus on terror attacks against civilians. The Paris bombing -- apparently carried out by ISIS-affiliated terrorists -- shook the world on November 13. Two weeks later, on December 2, a California couple allegedly inspired by ISIS carried out the mass shooting in San Bernardino that killed 14 people and injured 22 more.
On December 28, the Iraqi military would declare Ramadi "liberated" from ISIS. (This celebratory announcement didn't mention the inconvenient fact that U.S. bombing had largely pulverized what was left of the town. The 350,000 residents who'd fled ISIS brutality had no city to return to.)
The correlation between ISIS losing territory in its so-called "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq and the rise of terror attacks often much farther afield is one more indication of the failure of the U.S. "war on terror."
Once again, it demonstrates the futility of attempting to bomb or shoot terrorism out of existence. When bombing and shooting are the methods of choice the targets are not "terrorism," but cities and people. Air strikes and drone attacks -- on people in a car, in the desert, in a hospital, or at a wedding party -- may sometimes kill individual terrorists (and always other people), but do nothing to stop terrorism. Leaders are soon replaced, and the most adept bomb-makers soon turn out to have trained a successor.
Military engagement may have worked in some areas to oust ISIS forces from territory they controlled, but the cost of such campaigns is extraordinarily high for the people and nations where they occur. People face, as in Ramadi, the absolute destruction of their homes and city. They may become refugees or internally displaced people for a generation or more. In Fallujah, thousands of desperate civilians fleeing the fighting in mid-June found that no preparations had been made to care for them -- with clean water, food, shelter from the searing heat, and medical care all lacking.
A big problem Iraqi forces and their U.S. backers face is the lack of support from some residents for their "liberators." In a recent poll in Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, a full 74 percent of Sunni residents said they didn't want to be liberated by the Iraqi military. ISIS has held the city since June 2014.
This harkens back to the original reason ISIS became so powerful in Iraq. It's not because ordinary Iraqis supported the group's brutal, extremist definition of Islam, but because the sectarian Shi'a-dominated government in Baghdad -- and the often even more brutal and sectarian Shi'a militias allied to that government -- made ISIS appear a lesser evil. Of course not all Sunnis, or even a majority, turned to ISIS. But a not-insignificant number did, and some continue to accept the group, however reluctantly.
U.S.-led military campaigns "against terror" continue to set the stage for more terror attacks, and to create more terrorists, as anger turns to rage -- and rage, for some, turns brutally violent. The military-first U.S. strategy is exacting a huge price -- especially for the people in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and beyond -- but also on us here at home, and on civilians throughout the world.
If we're serious about ending terror attacks, there are a host of non-military approaches that hold far more promise than bomb-drone-kill. Diplomacy, humanitarian support, arms embargos, economic assistance, more diplomacy -- we need to use them all instead of military action, not alongside it. Step one means acknowledging that the current strategy is failing.
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Reports: Paris Attack Suspect Salah Abdeslam Captured in Brussels
Suspected allegedly played key role in coordinating and carrying out the violent attacks in Paris last year that left 130 people dead
Mar 18, 2016
Developing...
| Tweets about Brussels |
Salah Abdeslam, described in media reports as one of the "world's most wanted men" for his alleged role in coordinating and carrying out the violent attacks in Paris last year that left 130 people dead, has reportedly been "wounded" and captured following a shootout with law enforcement agents in Brussels on Friday. A second individual may also be in police custody, though details remain difficult to confirm at this early hour.
According to local Belgian outlet DH, Abdeslam was captured alive during a police operation that remains ongoing. Reporters have not been able to confirm his exact physical condition, though outlets reported Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, confirming his capture by declaring, "We got him."
French President Francoise Hollande confirmed that a high-level operation was underway.
The UK Independent reports:
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel left a European Union summit on the refugee crisis early as the raid unfolded.
Earlier today, Belgian federal prosecutors confirmed they found Abdeslam's fingerprints in a Brussels raid on Tuesday.
Abdeslam may have been one of the men who fled the raid on Tuesday, [Belgium's public broadcaster] reported, but officials would not confirm whether he was present.
Abdeslam went on the run after appearing to have removed his suicide vest and fled the Paris attacks on 13 November which left 130 dead.
The Guardian adds:
Earlier, the Belgian federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt confirmed that Abdeslam's fingerprints had been found at a flat that was raided in the Forest area of Brussels on Tuesday, where a shoot-out with police saw another gunman shot dead next to an Islamic State flag. Two suspects fled that raid.
Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French national who grew up in Brussels, fled Paris for Belgium by car hours after the 13 November attacks which killed 130 people. He is believed to have played a key role in organising the attacks.
Police believe he played a key role in the logistics of the Paris attacks and escorted the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France as part of the coordinated attacks.
Investigators are also considering whether he planned to carry out his own suicide attack in the 18th arrondissement of the French capital, and perhaps backed out. His brother blew himself up and died at a Paris bar on Boulevard Voltaire during the attacks.
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France Extends Freedom-Threatening State of Emergency
Threats to freedoms as a result of the increase in state powers have been widely rebuked by human rights and civil liberties watchdogs.
Feb 17, 2016
Despite widespread criticism over its threats to fundamental rights, French lawmakers on Tuesday voted to extend the state of emergency for an additional three months.
The 212 to 31 vote by the National Assembly extends the powers imposed following the November terrorist attacks until May 26.
The powers afforded by the state of emergency allow as the New York Times reports, "police to conduct raids of homes, businesses, associations and places of worship without judicial review and at any time. The police can place people under house arrest even if they do not have sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to detain or charge them."
"Our country is confronted with a terrorist threat more serious than any in our history," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told lawmakers Tuesday.
Yet, as the Times adds, the new powers have not been effective. "Less than 1 percent of raids have resulted in new terrorism investigations, the Interior Ministry acknowledges."
Human rights and civil liberties watchdogs have widely rebuked the threats to freedoms due to increased state powers.
In reports released earlier this month, for example, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found that the sweeping new powers have been used in ways that have not only failed to uphold the rights of men, women, and children but have also been traumatizing.
"France has a responsibility to ensure public safety and try to prevent further attacks, but the police have used their new emergency powers in abusive, discriminatory, and unjustified ways," said Izza Leghtas, Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This abuse has traumatized families and tarnished reputations, leaving targets feeling like second-class citizens."
As for how long the state of emergency could eventually continue, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in January that it might be "as long as is necessary" due to the threat from the Islamic State, adding, "It is a total and global war that we are facing with terrorism ... The war we are conducting must also be total, global, and ruthless."
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Thousands Mobilize in France Against 'Headlong Rush into Authoritarianism'
'It is urgent to clearly demonstrate our refusal of this obnoxious policy'
Jan 30, 2016
Thousands of people in Paris and other French cities hit the streets on Saturday to protest the controversial state of emergency that one organization says is an indication of a "headlong rush into authoritarianism."
The measure, imposed following the November attacks in Paris, is set to expire February 26. Debate in the bicameral parliament is forthcoming, as Agence France-Presse reports, with "Senate [...] to vote on the proposal on February 9, followed by a vote in the National Assembly on February 16."
At the action in Paris, police said 5,000 took part, while organizers said the turnout was 20,000. Dozens of similar protests also took place Saturday in other cities across the nation.
Twitter users captured some of the actions:
Paris-based civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net earlier this week called on people to take part in one of the protests, and also urged people to call members of parliament to voice their concerns.
"To stop the government's escalation of security measures, which destroys the bases of our institutions day after day and trivializes attacks on fundamental rights, it is urgent to clearly demonstrate our refusal of this obnoxious policy," the organization said in a media statement.
"As everyone is affected, everyone has the power to show the government that its actions are misguided and that it would be far stronger if it questioned its choices and decided to fight France's enemies with the weapons of law and civil liberties," that statement adds.
"The permanent state of emergency must not be allowed to become the norm in France," said Adrienne Charmet, the group's campaigns coordinator, adding, "It violates numerous fundamental rights and undermines the foundations of democracy."
"We count on French citizens to be wiser than their government and to massively mobilize in order to openly express, by emails or phone calls to their MPs and by going to the multiple demonstrations on 30 January, that these excessive security measures and headlong rush into authoritarianism are not what we want for France," she said.
The protests come on the heels of the resignation of French justice minister Christiane Taubira over President Francois Hollande's controversial anti-terror proposals. "Sometimes to resist means leaving," she said.
The protests also come the same week as France's top administrative court rejected an appeal brought by the Paris-based League of Human Rights that urged the body to suspend all or part of the state of emergency, and follows a joint statement by a group of United Nations human rights experts who warned that the measures "impose excessive and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental freedoms."
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French Minister Resigns Rather Than Stamp Draconian Anti-Terror Law
Draconian constitutional changes included stripping convicted terrorists of their French nationality
Jan 27, 2016
French justice minister Christiane Taubira, seen by many as a rare voice of compassion for marginalized communities, resigned unexpectedly on Wednesday over President Francois Hollande's controversial anti-terror proposals, saying, "Sometimes to resist means leaving."
"I left the government over a major political disagreement," Taubira told the BBC. "I am choosing to be true to myself, to my commitments, my battles and my relationships with other people."
Taubira, whose role in the cabinet included stamping the seal of France onto new laws and policies, was seen as a champion of civil rights, arguably best known for introducing the country's same-sex marriage law in 2013. As France 24's Douglas Herbert wrote on Wednesday, her convictions raised her profile among an increasingly divided political sector, often making her a target of racial slurs from the country's rightwing faction.
But the breaking point seemed to be Hollande's recent proposal to strip convicted terrorists of their citizenship if they held dual nationalities. Taubira and other critics on the left said that measure--which the government has stated would be purely symbolic--could serve to further divide French society and perpetuate dangerous "purity" propaganda.
The Guardian's Angelique Chrisafis explains:
[Taubira] had insisted she would stay in government despite opposing the measure, but tension was rising because she would be expected to defend the bill in parliament, despite being publicly fervently opposed to it.
On Wednesday morning, just as parliament prepared to open its first debate on the constitutional changes, Taubira met Hollande and Valls at the Elysee Palace for a meeting that was described as "warm". Hollande's presidential office swiftly issued a statement saying Taubira had resigned.
"The terrorist threat we are facing is serious," Taubira told reporters. "But I think we should not grant it any victory, whether military, diplomatic, political or symbolic."
Immediately after the news became public, Taubira tweeted, "Sometimes to resist means staying, sometimes to resist means leaving."
By contrast, Taubira's replacement, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, a member of parliament from Brittany, has been assisting Hollande in crafting his constitutional changes.
Also Wednesday, France's top administrative court upheld the state of emergency implemented in November, following the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, which allows police to conduct unwarranted raids and crack down on demonstrations. The Council of State rejected an appeal by the League for Human Rights, filed last week, that sought to suspend the three-month order.
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UN Human Rights Experts Blast France's "Excessive and Disproportionate" Cuts to Freedoms
Provisions imposed following last year's terrorist attacks must be amended 'to ensure they comply with international human rights law,' experts state.
Jan 20, 2016
Joining a chorus of warnings over France's state of emergency and increase in state powers imposed following the November attacks in Paris, a group of United Nations human rights experts has now said that the measures "impose excessive and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental freedoms."
Among the concerns mentioned in the United Nations Special Rapporteurs' joint statement released Tuesday is that the state of emergency--extended until February 26--and new electronic surveillance law have no safeguards of guaranteeing rule of law as there was no prior judicial review.
That state of emergency, as The Intercept reported, "gives prefects, the French government's local representatives, the ability to place people under house arrest, based merely on the suspicion of the intelligence service that they pose a threat to national security. They can also order police raids targeting any place where they think information about terrorism may be found, without a warrant." And while it "was initially supposed to mitigate the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, [it] has been used to target environmental and political activists who have nothing to do with radical Islam, let alone terrorism."
"Ensuring adequate protection against abuse in the use of exceptional measures and surveillance measures in the context of the fight against terrorism is an international obligation of the French State," the joint statement reads.
"We call on the authorities to revise the provisions and possible reforms adopted to [in the fight against terrorism] to ensure they comply with international human rights law," the experts, David Kaye, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression; Maina Kiai, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism; and Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, stated.
"While exceptional measures may be required under exceptional circumstances, this does not relieve the authorities from demonstrating that these are applied solely for the purposes for which they were prescribed, and are directly related to the specific objective that inspired them," they state.
The statement also calls out the recent house arrests of environmental activists, saying the actions "do not seem to adjust to the fundamental principles of necessity and proportionality."
Also expressing alarm--and taking legal action--on Tuesday regarding the controversial measures is the Paris-based League of Human Rights, which filed a complaint with France's top administrative court, urging the body to suspend all or part of the state of emerency.
The group cited French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' own words that the declaration was meant to be "a short term response." They also stated that such an exceptional declaration "cannot continue in a State of law."
Among the many civil liberties advocates who have blasted France's response to the attacks is Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia, who stated in December, "There is a very real risk that the rights of the wider population are getting ensnared in a net supposed to be designed to identify only those posing a genuine threat. Many people are being targeted solely on the basis of their religious practices or vague suspicions."
"These emergency measures are already proving to be disproportionate. Extending them outside of a state of emergency"--as the president has pushed for--is a dangerous step," van Gulik stated, adding, "Using the terrorist threat to change the constitution opens the floodgates for emergency-like measures to become the new norm."
Paris-based rights group La Quadrature du Net also expressed concern in the wake of the state of emergency declaration, stating, "at a time when the government--despite hesitation even within itself--believes that it must react with even more 'emergency laws,' we fear that the shock waves shaking our society will shove it away from democracy."
"By preventing a quiet reflection on the wider causes of these heinous crimes, by not making a real assessment of how to combine security actions while protecting fundamental freedoms and our social structure, we will surely sacrifice both our freedom and our security," the organization stated.
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