Last November, Paris experienced the deadliest terrorist attack in French history, a presumed “act of war” sanctioned by the Islamic State that killed over 125 people and injured several hundred more in the process. French officials reacted swiftly to this devastating event, declaring a state of emergency set to expire on Feb. 26 of this year, which elevates police power and military presence in high-traffic areas across the nation. During this period, the government aims to adapt its security measures to the increasing threat of radical Islam.
Since Nov. 13, police officers have been endowed with the power to conduct house raids and searches without any form of judicial oversight. Soldiers armed with automatic rifles currently patrol the streets of major cities in large numbers. And, while France has never succeeded in eradicating prejudice among its police force, the state of emergency vastly increases the potential for racial profiling and general harassment of the nation’s substantial Muslim population.
Police forces have undoubtedly taken advantage of their newly-granted power, conducting 3,099 house raids and placing over 380 people under house arrest in the three months since the attacks. Supporters of the state of emergency (roughly 80 percent of the French population) may contest that this abnormal number of searches and seizures has made the country safer from terrorist attacks, yet the over 3,000 house raids have culminated in only four judicial proceedings related to terrorism. Only one person has been charged.
There is something frightening about the way the French government is wielding its power. Should a state of emergency be justified when the disproportional profiling of thousands of people has resulted in finding one alleged terrorist? At what point does a government move beyond the realm of “martial law” into blatant contempt for established precedents of human rights?
If France were to abide by its Feb. 26 deadline, these questions would not need to be asked; however, whether as a result of genuine fear or strong anti-Muslim sentiment, Prime Minister Manuel Valls recently stated the state of emergency should remain in place until the threat of ISIS is eliminated in France. The government will soon vote on a motion to extend the deadline far beyond Feb. 26, a looming decision with serious implications for the future of the country. In the meantime, President François Hollande is drafting a bill to have these special emergency measures indoctrinated into the French constitution.
The potential for an extension has caused an outcry among activists in the global community. Most notably, several experts from the United Nations Human Rights Council have called on the French government to deny the motion to extend the state of emergency. According to these experts, “the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the state of emergency and surveillance laws” pose serious threats to freedom of expression and peaceful protest, as well as the right to privacy. They also expressed skepticism of the intentions behind the push for extension, insinuating in their formal statement that the emergency measures may not be “applied solely for the purposes for which they were prescribed.” A clear example of this phenomenon occurred in December, when the government used its emergency powers to ban public demonstrations during the Paris climate talks.
Evidently, the Human Rights Council raises an important question. Is the state of emergency a genuine measure, or could it possibly be a veil for some other agenda — one based more on underlying prejudices than justice itself? My American-centric mind cannot help but relate France’s state of emergency to our government’s support of mandatory minimum laws, which have been proven to disproportionately target specific individuals, namely low-income minorities. Although supposed terrorists are often regarded in a more negative light than drug users, the French government seems to be abiding by a similar premise, endowing police and military forces unregulated discretion to target a group of people, justified by an intensely complex “threat” that has existed for years and will likely not be resolved for decades to come — if ever.
All French citizens deserve to feel safe, but certain ethnicities do not deserve to feel safer than others. Words like “probable cause” and “unlawful search and seizure” may be far from legislators’ minds in times of panic, but when these ideals are sacrificed indefinitely due to one horrifying event, the citizens of a nation become bound to the serfdom of paranoia, encouraged to believe in their false judgements by the loud echoes of authority.
And, while it may be difficult to find ways to ameliorate the “threat of ISIS” without repressing the liberties of innocent people, democratic governments have a mandate to at least try — first by ensuring judicial oversight every step of the way, a lesson the United States could learn as well. Judicial oversight brings rationality to situations of passion and fear. This is why safe nations are governed by legal precedents, and this is why scrapping these precedents is so poisonous to a society’s future. France was the birthplace of modern democracy — let’s hope it doesn’t become the grave.
Ryan Gorman is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.gorman@cavalierdaily.com.
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