France unveils $108-million-plan to fight racism
France says it is set to allocate USD 108 million to a plan aimed at curbing soaring acts of racism in the country.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls unveiled the plan in Creteil, a suburb of the capital, Paris, on Friday, according to which the perpetrators of racist acts would face a tougher punishment.
The premier further warned that “racism” as well as hatred towards Muslims and strangers are “intolerably rising” in his country.
The plan would consider racist acts an aggravating factor in any crime or offense, among other measures to deal with racism.
It also proposes the formation of a state unit tasked with monitoring hate speeches on the Internet, calling for focus on specific actions in schools.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said Thursday that the European country witnessed 222 Islamophobic acts in the first quarter of 2015, showing a drastic surge in comparison with the 37 incidents recorded over the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the French National Observatory against Islamophobia warned of an unprecedented “implosion of anti-Muslim acts” in the country.
“Not since the observatory was established in 2011, have we seen an implosion of anti-Muslim acts, whether actions, threats or on social networks,” said Abdallah Zekri, the observatory’s president, adding, “These anti-Muslim acts resulted in violent assaults on men and women, some pregnant.”
The reports also said that most of the Islamophobic attacks were carried out in January, thus proving a strong link between the attacks and assaults on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took place in January.
On January 7, gunmen attacked the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding 11 others. The attack, which was later claimed by al-Qaeda terrorist group, was largely believed to have been launched over the weekly’s blasphemous cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The incident was followed by a series of sieges and shootings across Paris, resulting in the killing of more people and an extensive sense of insecurity in the country.
The rising wave of anti-Muslim hate attacks comes while Muslims across the world condemned both the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office as well as the weekly’s sacrilegious cartoons that insulted Prophet Muhammad.
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