Key Findings from Human Rights Organization Report As France gets ready to respond to the Committee Against Torture (CAT) on its human rights record during the 82nd session, a report by an international human rights organization raises concerns about the activities of French police. The report notes severe violations of the fundamental rights of individuals during police raids and detention, with more emphasis on the treatment of spiritual minorities.
Police Misconduct and Human Rights Abuses The report provides distressing descriptions of police raids that involved use of excessive force and humiliating of detainees, and which showed poor supervision of law enforcement activities. Testimonies show that during the simultaneous raids on yoga centers in November 2023, heavily armed and hooded officers broke into private residences using battering rams, even when the doors were open and keys were available.
The residents were seized from their homes in the nightwear and made to stand outside in the cold -1°C for almost one hour.
Celina Angelescu in one testimony gave a report of two police officers taking her photograph with her own phone with no reason given.
Lucia Papava, another witness, said that she was called names and that the police called her home a ‘whorehouse’. Other accounts show that detainees’ rights were violated while in custody. Those who were arrested complained of being kept in deplorable conditions and not being given food or water.
For instance, one woman was starved for eight hours despite asking for food several times, while the other said she was put in a cold cell with only a thin blanket to cover herself. Importantly, legal representation was completely barred, and detainees were often forced to sign untranslated documents under psychological pressure.
One woman explained that she was told by a translator that signing a French statement “would be good for her” without explaining what it meant. Sectors of Systematic Abuse in Interrogations Interrogations are also examined as systematic abuse in the report. Witnesses said that the environments were coercive in the extreme, with threats and questions about intimate matters. It is alleged that members of the police forced individuals to incriminate themselves through intimidation, and one detainee was told the duration of the questioning in order to obtain her release. Sadly, the interrogation techniques often entailed sexually explicit questions, the goal of which it appeared was not so much to support real charges as to humiliate the subject.
Disproportionate impact of minorities, and more specifically, spiritual communities such as yoga practitioners, was witnessed during the raids on the basis of suspected sectarian activity. The report compares these discriminatory practices with the existing institutional racism that targets religious minorities in France.
Such practices are inconsistent with the CAT convention’s provisions that prohibit inhumane treatment and discrimination of all forms. Recommendations for Reform The report ends with essential recommendations for the French government to address these systemic failures. Some of the key proposals include; Improving the supervision of police operations to reduce abuse, providing detainees with access to legal representatives within the first hour of arrest, and making it compulsory for the police to undergo training on human rights. The organization also demands that a independent body be established to investigate cases of police misconduct and that the persecution of religious and spiritual minorities should stop.
These recommendations are in line with those made by the Committee Against Torture in its previous session, pointing to the continued failure of France to meet the minimum standards set by the international human rights system. Unless substantial changes are made, the report argues that France will continue to practice systematic violations of people’s dignity and rights.
