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POLITICS

Le Pen trial: French far-right leader acquitted on hate speech charges

A French court on Tuesday acquitted far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen on charges she broke hate speech laws by tweeting pictures of Islamic State atrocities.

Le Pen trial: French far-right leader acquitted on hate speech charges
Marine Le Pen. Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

Le Pen shared the gruesome images in December 2015, a few weeks after Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in attacks in Paris, in response to a journalist who she accused of drawing a comparison between IS and her party.

One of the pictures showed the body of James Foley, an American journalist beheaded by the Islamist militants.

Another showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being run over by a tank, and the third a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage.

“Daesh is this!” Le Pen wrote in a caption, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

In 2018 a judge charged her, as well as her Rassemblement National (National Rally) party colleague Gilbert Collard who also tweeted the pictures, with circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity” and that can be viewed by a minor.

The crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000, but the prosecution sought only a €5,000 fine.

The court acquitted both Le Pen and Collard on Tuesday, citing the right to freedom of expression.

The court recognised Le Pen’s intention to inform by sharing the images and said doing so can contribute to public debate, as long as violence is not normalised.

“It’s a great victory for law because freedom of expression was at stake in this case,” Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut told reporters.

“Freedom of expression has been recognised as complete for a top politician,” he added.

The verdict comes as opinion polls show Le Pen will likely face off again against President Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential contest, in a repeat of the run-off seen in the last presidential elections in 2017.

Member comments

  1. How she slithered away from this is beyond belief. It makes one wonder what the politics of the “court” were.

  2. I don’t like Marine le Pen, but I support freedom of speech.
    The pictures she posted on twitter were gruesome, I agree, however I feel it’s a good thing for people to see the atrocities caused by IS.
    You could turn away and not look if you prefer, that’s your choice.

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POLITICS

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

France's lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a bill forbidding workplace discrimination based on hair texture, which the draft law's backers say targets mostly black women wearing their hair naturally.

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

Olivier Serva, an independent National Assembly deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe and the bill’s sponsor, said it would penalise any workplace discrimination based on “hair style, colour, length or texture”.

Similar laws exist in around 20 US states which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In Britain, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Serva, who is black, said women “of African descent” were often encouraged before job interviews to change their style of hair. Backers also say that men who wear their hair in styles like dreadlocks are also affected.

The bill was approved in the lower house National Assembly with 44 votes in favour and two against. It will now head to the upper Senate where the right has the majority and the vote’s outcome is much less certain.

‘Target of discrimination’

Serva, who also included discrimination suffered by blondes and redheads in his proposal, points to an American study stating that a quarter of black women polled said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the job interview.

Such statistics are hard to come by in France, which bans the compilation of personal data that mention a person’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The draft law does not, in fact, contain the term “racism”, noted Daphne Bedinade, a social anthropologist, saying the omission was problematic.

“To make this only about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them a target of discrimination, mostly black women,” she told Le Monde daily.

A black Air France air crew member in 2022 won a 10-year legal battle for the right to work with braided hair on flights after a decision by France’s highest appeals court.

While statistics are difficult to come by, high-profile people have faced online harassment because of their hairstyle.

In the political sphere they include former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye, and Audrey Pulvar, a deputy mayor of Paris, whose afro look has attracted much negative comment online.

The bill’s critics say it is unnecessary, as discrimination based on looks is already banned by law.

“There is no legal void here,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specialising in labour law.

Calling any future law “symbolic”, Rocheblave said it would not be of much practical help when it came to proving discrimination in court.

Kenza Bel Kenadil, an influencer and self-proclaimed “activist against hair discrimination”, said a law would still send an important message.

“It would tell everybody that the law protects you in every way and lets you style your hair any way you want,” she said.

The influencer, who has 256,000 followers on Instagram, said she herself had been “forced” to tie her hair in a bun when she was working as a receptionist.

Her employers were “very clear”, she said. “It was, either you go home and fix your hair or you don’t come here to work”.

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