The Ministry of the Interior has requested in certain academies an “assessment of the rate of absenteeism observed during Eid-el-Fitr” but denies any “registration”, declared, Sunday, May 21, Sonia Backès, secretary of state responsible for citizenship, after the indignation aroused by the initiative.
“The Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Departments regularly studies the impact of certain religious holidays on the functioning of public services, and in particular within the school sphere,” she said in a press release. It is in this context that an assessment of the absenteeism rate observed on the occasion of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, on April 21, was requested, in certain academies, from the heads of establishments. »
“No personal data was requested or recorded at any time,” says Sonia Backès, adding that the initiative was not a desire to “file” students according to their confession.
Clumsiness
In the Toulouse academy, police officers asked the heads of the city’s establishments by email to tell them the number of students absent on Eid day. Association, union or political leaders were worried about this police initiative, some, like the former socialist deputy of Paris Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, evoking “a file in the whole city”.
The police request is “particularly shocking in that it associates Muslim religious practice with a security issue”, SOS Racisme was indignant, recalling that the request to schools came from the departmental directorate of public security ( DDSP). Later on Sunday, the association reacted to Mrs. Backès’ press release by accusing the Ministry of the Interior of showing “guilty casualness when it comes to explaining an act which falls under (…) ‘an instruction he issued’.
“For what other religious holidays has the Ministry of the Interior requested an assessment of the absenteeism rate from the heads of establishments”, questioned the association in its press release. The president of SOS Racisme, Dominique Sopo, also castigated a logic “of concealment” of the intentions of the Ministry of the Interior.
The SUD-education union, for its part, denounced “Islamophobic excesses” in the administration. “AESH colleagues [accompanying students with disabilities] and agents were refused leave of absence”, for the day of the party, unlike teachers, he adds.
The Union of French Mosques, for its part, has called for a “due investigation”. “Families must be duly informed and reassured of the future of the information given by certain heads of establishments who, unfortunately, responded to the request of the police,” she said.
The request of the police had been made directly to the establishments concerned, without the approval of the rectorate of Toulouse. “Under no circumstances are we carrying out investigations of this kind,” Mostafa Fourar, rector of the academy, told Agence France-Presse. A source familiar with the matter had mentioned a “clumsiness” in the wording of the request relayed by the national education referent police officers for the benefit of territorial intelligence.
