Tuesday, September 12, two deputies from the presidential majority tabled a bill which could more firmly apply prison sentences against the authors of comments deemed racist or anti-Semitic.
The project, supported by Caroline Yadan, deputy for the 3rd district of Paris and Mathieu Lefèvre, deputy for the 5th district of Val-de-Marne, would give the courts the possibility of issuing an arrest warrant in the event of serious offenses of a racist or anti-Semitic nature. “In our Republic, all hatred must be fought and all discrimination tracked down,” said MP Caroline Yadan on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
This proposal is part of a broad government plan against racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination, the main axes of which were announced by Élisabeth Borne last January. This addresses, among other things, cases of offenses falling under press law, that is to say “convictions of a racist or anti-Semitic nature”, “contestations of crimes against humanity” and “apology “crime against humanity or war crime”, all defined by the law of July 29, 1881.
“We realized that there was a legal void into which many perpetrators of serious racist and anti-Semitic offenses were falling,” explains Caroline Yadan. “Today, it is enough to be out of reach to escape conviction, because this law of 1881 does not provide for the possibility of combining serious detention sentences (minimum one year) with an arrest warrant” , continues the member for Paris.
This is the case of far-right essayist Alain Soral, sentenced on April 15, 2019 by the Paris criminal court to one year in prison, for contesting a crime against humanity. Due to his absence at the trial, the court accompanied its decision with an arrest warrant.
Convicted on multiple occasions for similar acts, this decision should have permanently sent Alain Bonnet, his real name, behind bars. However, the prosecution appealed the decision, considering that this arrest warrant had no legal basis. Indeed, under French law, the issuance of an arrest warrant can only be issued if it concerns a common law or military offense. However, Alain Soral was convicted of a press offense, on the basis of article 24 bis of the 1881 law on freedom of the press. He therefore escaped a prison sentence.
Caroline Yadan also points to the cases of far-right activist Hervé Ryssen, negationist Vincent Reynouard, and even neo-Nazi Boris Le Lay, who acts from Japan.
To date, non-public insult of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature constitutes a 5th class infraction which exposes its author to a maximum penalty of 1,500 euros fine. Conversely, the same insult when it is public becomes an offense punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.
“There is a real difference in legal treatment between public insult and non-public insult, even though when we receive messages of an anti-Semitic or racist nature, it remains extremely serious,” underlines Caroline Yadan. Insult is punishable by a “simple infraction”, “yet the harm done to the victim is also significant”, she adds. This is why, with Mathieu Lefèvre, the MP proposes “to transform non-public insult of a discriminatory nature into an offence, and to provide for an aggravating circumstance in the event of non-public racist or anti-Semitic offenses committed by persons holding public authority”.
If this law came into force, the author of the anti-Semitic letter of which the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun Pivet, was recently the victim, would face “a much greater sentence”, despite “the non-public nature of this attack”, concludes Caroline Yadan.