The town hall of Lille on Friday February 24 engaged in a showdown with La Citadelle, local headquarters of the ultra-right, against the organization in the evening of a meeting deemed racist, prohibited by a prefectural decree validated by justice, but maintained by its organizers. The socialist mayor, Martine Aubry, announced during a press briefing that she had taken “an order prohibiting the meeting”, entitled “Let them return to Africa”, under the authority’s “police powers”. municipal.
Referred to in summary proceedings by La Citadelle, the administrative court of Lille had just validated a prefectural decree of February 15 prohibiting this “event”, but arguing the risks of overflows on the public highway. In view of these reasons, the president of La Citadelle, Aurélien Verhassel, ex-member of the dissolved group Génération identitaire, announced to Agence France-Presse the maintenance of the evening, which according to him will only bring together “30 to 40 people within the premises, in the city centre. He called on possible sympathizers not to come in support on the public highway.
“Public incitement to hatred”
In its banning order, the prefecture invoked a title inciting “racial hatred”. But she also pointed to the risk of seeing this meeting “take place on the public highway” at the very moment when a counter-demonstration is announced at 7 p.m. by unions and left-wing organizations. In its judgment, the court took up only this last argument to judge the ban “necessary and proportionate” with regard in particular to the risk of confrontations.
The prefect “had the opportunity to prohibit the meeting inside and outside the premises, he did not do it”, regretted Ms. Aubry to justify her arrest. “The fundamental problem is the theme of this meeting, which will attract a lot of people, undermines public order and is criminally reprehensible,” she counterattacked. The municipal decree also points out that Mr. Verhassel’s comments made “recently and repeatedly on the subject of this meeting (…) constitute a public provocation to hatred and discrimination on the grounds of origin, ethnicity or religion”.
The ban on the evening was initially announced by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on February 9. Its title refers to remarks by deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas in the National Assembly, sanctioned with fifteen days of exclusion. In this case, the Lille prosecutor’s office opened an investigation on February 13 for “public provocation to hatred or violence because of origin, ethnicity or race”.
“On the occasion of this ban on demonstrations, Georges-François Leclerc, prefect of the North, recalls that he will never allow incitement to racial hatred to have the right of citizenship in Lille as in the North”, tweeted the prefecture in an initial reaction to the court’s decision.
” Abuse of power “
In a second decision on this case rendered on Friday, the administrative court also authorized the immediate reopening of the establishment, which presents itself as a “patriotic bar” and a “house of identity”, by suspending the execution of a first municipal decree imposing its immediate closure on February 14. The town hall will appeal, said Ms. Aubry.
The representatives of La Citadelle had denounced before the administrative court a “misuse of power” on the part of the town hall, which considers this premises as an establishment receiving the public (ERP), but without being declared as such, which justified according to her its closure. The court confirmed in its decision the qualification of ERP, but considers that the city should have “invited the association to regularize its situation and carry out checks” before issuing its order.
