Elisabeth Borne wondered on Wednesday about the evolution and the role of the League of Human Rights (LDH) on Islamism or Sainte-Soline, sparking an angry reaction from the association and a new outcry on the left.
“I have a lot of respect for what the LDH has embodied” but “I no longer understand some of its positions”, declared the Prime Minister during the session of questions to the government of the Senate, relaying the criticisms of her Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
The president of the Human Rights League Patrick Baudouin immediately declared himself “revolted” by the “amalgam” of Elisabeth Borne and “surprised at the distortion” of the position of the association founded in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair, calling on the Prime Minister to “appease the debate and not make matters worse”.
The head of government pointed to the “ambiguities” of the LDH “in the face of radical Islamism” and the fact that the association recently “challenged an order prohibiting the transport of weapons by destination to Sainte-Soline” (Deux- Sèvres), a place of clashes between demonstrators opposed to megabasins (water reservoirs) and the police.
“Weapons by destination” means any object that can be used as a projectile or in confrontations with law enforcement.
However, Ms. Borne assured that there was “no question of lowering the subsidy of this or that” association in principle, wishing that human rights organizations “continue their watchdog action”.
“But dialogue with associations on their actions is also a responsibility, when it comes to public funding,” continued the Prime Minister.
Gérald Darmanin, during hearings before Parliament last week, had declared that “the subsidy given by the State” to the LDH “deserves to be looked at within the framework of the actions which have been carried out”. He had then aroused strong protests on the left.
In particular, the LDH has deployed citizen observers in recent weeks during demonstrations to, among other things, document the system of maintaining order.
“Demonstrating is a fundamental right, it is not by excusing violence that we defend it, on the contrary. It must be able to be exercised in security”, underlined Ms. Borne, paying “homage” to the forces of the ‘order.
Elisabeth Borne “yields to little sirens which make her slide towards remarks which are not acceptable to us (…) it is a little music which runs on the side of some of our adversaries located rather on the right, even on the the far right,” said Mr. Baudouin.
Regarding “destination weapons”, the president of the LDH underlined that his organization did not question the ban on the carrying of weapons but contested the definition chosen, which ignored the case law of the Constitutional Council refusing the extension to principle of the notion of weapon to any object that can be used as a projectile.
Ms. Borne “does not want to disavow her Minister of the Interior” and will “put oil on the fire again” in the context of the pension crisis, lamented on Public Senate the leader of the Communist senators, Eliane Assassi, who had asked the Prime Minister the question.
Environmental Senator David Salmon denounced “subsidy blackmail”, and lamented “a moment when we no longer have the right to question government policies”.
Elisabeth Borne “confirms the illiberal drift of the Emmanuel Macron regime”, judged in a tweet the MEP and former leader of EELV Yannick Jadot.
On the right, the leader of the LR senators Bruno Retailleau proposed to “cut the subsidies” to the LDH, denouncing a “terrible ambiguity and even a complicity” of the association with “Islamist” organizations now dissolved such as the CCIF (Collective against Islamophobia in France).
The LDH “undoubtedly had a noble past, a glorious past” but it is “being lost in quarrels (…) of the far left”, according to him.
04/12/2023 18:58:10 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP