23.04.2014 Le Progrès publishes racist article about delinquent Rroma

Several French newspapers report on an article, published by the regional newspaper Le Progrès, which assigns different types of offenses to various nationalities, including the Rroma. These are named directly in connection with petty crimes, prostitution, scrap metal theft and burglary offenses. That the Rroma are not a nationality but an ethnic group, Annie Demontfaucon (2014), the author of the article, seems to have forgotten. In France, statistics based on national origin are allowed, but not those that capture ethnic membership. Therefore, Le Progrès makes itself liable to prosecution with the infographics, as the attorney of La Voix des Roms confirms. SOS Racisme will file suit against the newspaper for illegal, ethnic profiling of Rroma. The same will be done by Licra (Ligue internationalle contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme), which stated that even the mention of national identity in the context of crime is far from unproblematic. A third lawsuit will be filed by the Movement against Racism MRAP (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples). MRAP also raises the question of whether the sources of the article can be traced back to racist police statistics. But this question cannot be clearly answered: “For their sources, explains the chief editor, they simply contacted the offices of the police, the gendarmerie, and the customs authority, who communicated them the general trends, based on their observations and the arrests. The general trends therefore, but no official figures” (Metro News 2014). Christophe Soullez, head of the national observation post for delinquency and criminal justice (ONDRP), decidedly questions the quality and origin of the sources. While the ONDRP itself publishes statistics based on national affiliation, these only list perpetrators sentenced by the court and not conjectures on the membership of the actors. A link between ethnicity and crimes committed is clearly racist and illegal, he states. La Voix des Roms filed a complaint against an illegal, ethnic file a few years ago, with the name “Minorités Ethniques Non Sédentaires (MENS). Not surprisingly, on the side of the Front National, one praised the article of Le Progrès. Florian Philippot, vice-president of the National Front, announced that he thanked the newspaper that they showed the negative effects of immigration. The fact that this is a deeply biased and racist interpretation of the facts, the conservative nationalist politician cares little about (compare Conxicoeur 2014, Metronews 2014, Le Figaro 2014, Le Parisien 2014, Le Huffington Post 2014).