Europe's top rights court rules against France in racial profiling case
FILE PHOTO: The building of the European Court of Human Rights is seen in Strasbourg, France, September 11, 2019. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler/ File Photo
PARIS (Reuters) -Europe's top human rights court ruled on Thursday that French police had carried out discriminatory checks on a Frenchman of African descent, the first such verdict in a case of racial profiling brought against France.
The French government "failed to provide objective and reasonable justification" for the police carrying out three identity checks on Karim Touil within the space of 10 days in 2011 in the city centre of Besancon, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said in its ruling.
The court ordered France to pay Touil 3,000 euros ($3,512) for violating articles 14 and 8, on discrimination and the right to a private life, of the European Human Rights Convention.
However, for five other applicants in the case, also young men of African descent, the court found there was no discrimination due to lack of evidence, noting that the ID checks had mostly taken place "against a backdrop of tension".
While welcoming Touil's successful claim, Lanna Hollo, a rights advocate with French organisation RECLAIM, who has been involved in the case for 13 years, said the court's reasoning risked reinforcing discrimination in certain zones.
"It fails to sufficiently protect all people in all parts of the territory - especially those living in France's poorer neighbourhoods with high visible minority populations," she said.
In recent years the court has issued rulings against Germany and Switzerland over discriminatory police checks.
A study published on Tuesday by France's human rights watchdog found that young Black men or those perceived as Arab or North African were four times more likely to be stopped by police and 12 times more likely to undergo "extensive" checks, involving being body-searched or taken to the police station.
($1 = 0.8542 euros)
(Reporting by Layli ForoudiEditing by Gareth Jones)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
2 hours ago
- The Star
Analysis-Following NATO summit, Trump and Europe still at odds over Putin's ambitions
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -For U.S. President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin is a man looking for an off-ramp to his bloody three-year assault on Ukraine. But according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the Russian leader may be just getting started. If the alliance does not invest in its defense capabilities, Rutte warned the annual NATO summit on Tuesday, Russia could attack an alliance country within three years. By most measures, this year's NATO summit in The Hague was a success. Member states largely agreed to a U.S. demand to boost defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. Trump, who once derided the alliance as a "rip-off," said his view had changed, while a budding bromance blossomed between him and Rutte, who compared the U.S. president to a stern "daddy" managing his geopolitical underlings. But the summit, which ended on Wednesday, also highlighted the widening gap between how the U.S. and Europe see the military ambitions of Russia, the bloc's main foil. That is despite some lawmakers in Trump's own Republican Party hardening their rhetoric in recent weeks, arguing that while the president's ambition to negotiate an end to Russia's war in Ukraine is laudable, it is now clear that Putin is not serious about coming to the table. In a Wednesday press conference, Trump conceded that it was "possible" Putin had territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine. But he insisted that the Russian leader - buffeted by manpower and materiel losses - wanted the war to end quickly. "I know one thing: He'd like to settle," Trump said. "He'd like to get out of this thing. It's a mess for him." Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump's view in a sideline interview with Politico, saying the U.S. was holding off on expanding its sanctions against Moscow, in part to keep talks going. "If we did what everybody here wants us to do - and that is come in and crush them with more sanctions - we probably lose our ability to talk to them about the ceasefire," he said. The message from others at the summit was starkly different. A senior NATO official told reporters in a Tuesday briefing that Putin was not in fact interested in a ceasefire - or in engaging in good-faith talks at all. "Regardless of battlefield dynamics, we continue to doubt that Russia has any interest in meaningful negotiations," the official said. Russia's ambitions, the senior official said, go beyond control of "certain territories at their administrative lines," as Rubio put it. Putin is instead bent on imposing his "political will" on neighboring states. Rutte put the Russian threat in existential terms. "If we do not invest now," he said on Tuesday, "we are really at risk that the Russians might try something against NATO territory in three, five or seven years." RUSSIA STRATEGY REMAINS ELUSIVE The U.S. is not the only NATO member with a more optimistic view of Russia. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a longtime Trump ally and critic of European institutions, said Russia was "not strong enough to represent a real threat to NATO." Still, as the alliance's largest contributor and most powerful member, Washington's position is a central preoccupation in most NATO capitals. The White House, asked for comment, referred to Trump's comments at the Wednesday press conference. In response to a request for comment, a separate NATO official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, disputed that there were differing assessments within the alliance, pointing to a NATO declaration on Wednesday which referenced the "long-term threat posed by Russia." The Russian embassy in Washington referred to Thursday comments by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who criticized NATO for wasting money on defense. "It seems that only by invoking the fabricated 'Russian threat' will it be possible to explain to ordinary people why their pockets are being emptied once again," she said. The U.S. State Department and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. The lack of a common understanding about Putin's goals will complicate future diplomatic plans to wind down the war, said Philippe Dickinson, the deputy director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council and a former British diplomat. "To reach a peace agreement, it's not just something that Trump and Putin can agree themselves," Dickinson said. "There does need to be European involvement. That needs to mean that there is some sort of sharing of views among allies on what Putin is trying to achieve." European leaders likely have not given up on trying to change Trump's views on Russia, Dickinson said. But they were always unlikely bring up thorny conversations at the NATO summit. The alliance's main goal was to simply get through it without major blowups, he said, an aim that was accomplished. Still, peace came at a cost - the lack of substantive discussion around Ukraine and Russia, he argued, was conspicuous. "The lack of a Russia strategy is a real glaring omission from what the summit could have produced," Dickinson said. (Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington; Additional reporting by Andrew Gray at the Hague; Editing by Don Durfee and Matthew Lewis)
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
Bill Moyers, broadcaster and LBJ's White House press secretary, dies at 91 -Washington Post
(Reuters) -Bill Moyers, a key member of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's inner circle and later a guiding force in American journalism during more than 40 years in public television, has died at the age of 91, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. At a time when critics said broadcast news was becoming fluffier and shallower, Moyers pursued a thoughtful, in-depth approach, bringing an intellectual perspective delivered in a soothing Texas twang. He took an activist approach to the job and The Nation magazine called him a "radical presence" in broadcast news, which his critics said was proof that the Public Broadcasting Service network should not get federal funding. Starting in 1971, Moyers had regular shows on public television, including "Bill Moyers' Journal," "Now With Bill Moyers," "Moyers on America" and "Moyers and Company," as well limited-run series on the U.S. Constitution, faith and mythology. Among the other topics he explored at length on his shows were poverty, racism, money in politics, climate change, income inequality, the shortcomings of the media and what he called the "pirates and predators of Wall Street." "He used the tools of the documentarian to wield a velvet sledgehammer, bludgeoning corporate polluters and government ne'er-do-wells with precision and grace," New York Times media columnist David Carr wrote in 2004. Billy Don Moyers was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, and grew up mostly in Marshall, Texas. A dutiful, energetic overachiever, he dedicated himself to school, church and work, including a job at the local newspaper. His early adult life would be a tug of war between the pulpit, the press and politics. He was attending North Texas State College when he first went to Washington in 1954 as a summer intern in the office of then-Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson. When he returned to school, transferring to the University of Texas, he worked on the student newspaper and Johnson made sure he had a job at the Austin television station owned by his wife, "Lady Bird" Johnson. He also pursued the ministry, becoming ordained as a Baptist minister in 1954 and earning a master of divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1959. Johnson's legendary powers of persuasion eventually prevailed and Moyers became an aide during Johnson's unsuccessful presidential run against John F. Kennedy in 1960. After the election, Kennedy chose Moyers to be assistant director of his newly established Peace Corps. After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and Johnson became president, Moyers moved to the White House. He was only 30 years old but became one of the most important people in Washington - a duty-bound, deal-making extension of his boss. He served as Johnson's press secretary, adviser, speech writer and congressional go-between. In 1965, he appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time, which called him "LBJ's Young Man in Charge of Everything." Moyers was a driving force in forging Johnson's Great Society legislation - laws and programs that included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the "war on poverty," Medicaid and Medicare, conservation and aid to education. "He taught me so much about politics and about what's possible, about human behavior, about the consequences of decisions," Moyers said of Johnson in a 1989 Texas Monthly interview. "At the same time, he was a driven man, a man who could consume you." Critics said Moyers sometimes got his hands dirty on Johnson's behalf. He was known to leak stories and plant questions with the press corps in advance of news conferences. The Washington Post reported that he ordered the FBI to search for gay people in the administration, and CBS correspondent Morley Safer said in his autobiography that Moyers also had a role in the FBI's bugging of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Moyers left Johnson's service in 1967 - partly because he no longer believed in his boss's war in Vietnam - to become publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York daily. The newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership, but he left in 1970 after the publisher deemed him too liberal. Moyers then went on a bus ride around the country that he chronicled in the book "Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country." He made his move to PBS in 1971 with "Bill Moyers Journal" and in 1986 he and his wife, Judith, started their own production company to make shows for public television stations. Moyers had stints with the major networks - as a correspondent and commentator with CBS in the 1970s, and NBC and MSNBC in the 1990s - but greatly preferred the freedom and depth that public television offered. Moyers and his wife had three children, William Cope, Alice Suzanne, and John Davidson. (Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Rosalba O'Brien)
The Star
5 hours ago
- The Star
Over 20 research projects at UK universities halted after U.S. funding withdrawal
LONDON, June 26 (Xinhua) -- More than 20 projects at Russell Group institutions, an association of 24 leading universities in Britain, have been halted following the withdrawal of U.S. funding, local media reported Wednesday. At least nine research projects at Russell Group universities have received formal stop notices from the U.S. government, according to Research Professional News (RPN), a London-based outlet. These notices, requiring a halt to work due to funding suspension, have resulted in either grant cancellations or suspensions at five Russell Group institutions. Information requests submitted by RPN to all Russell Group institutions revealed that a further 14 projects lost funding after receiving similar notices from their U.S. collaborators. One researcher whose project was delayed told RPN that they "felt like their funding had been used as a pawn." In some instances, British universities were notified by U.S.-based lead researchers who had awarded funding to their British collaborators, only to later inform them that the grants had been terminated.
