France’s parliament on Wednesday passed a new anti-terrorism law that gives law enforcement sweeping powers to search homes, carry out surveillance, and set up borders checks. The new law replaces the state of national emergency that came into effect after the 2015 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The state of emergency was extended six times and due to expire next month. Despite the unprecedented powers given to the police and the security forces, France has been hit by a series of attacks leaving 241 people dead since the imposition of the emergency.
An excerpt from the new anti-terror law published by the France’s AFP news agency reads:
The top government official in each of France’s regions can order the closure of mosques, churches or other places of worship for six months if preachers are found to have incited attacks or glorified terrorism.
At last, the French lawmakers have got it all covered. “Churches or other places of worship” with preachers inciting attacks and glorifying terrorism is exactly what law enforcement should be focused on.
And it gets even more hilarious.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the new laws and promised to deport the illegal immigrants with links to Radical Islam. He called for “uncompromisingly sending back” people with “no legal right” to be in France. But he also regretted that France was so unwelcoming to migrants. “We don’t welcome people well,” President Macron critiqued France’s migrant policy. He endorsed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of open borders, repeating the Merkelian phrase that the country needed to take its “fair share” of migrants.
The AFP news agency reported the provisions of the new anti-terrorism law:
The French parliament on Wednesday adopted a tough new anti-terrorism bill that gives authorities vastly expanded powers to search homes, restrict movement and close places of worship.The bill, which was passed by the Senate after modifications to address concerns about civil liberties, makes permanent some of the exceptional measures contained in the state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 Paris attacks. (…)The interior minister can place suspected jihadist sympathisers who are not accused of a specific crime under a loose form of house arrest. (…)A local police chief can ask a judge for a warrant to search — the bill uses the term “visit” — the homes of people with suspected terror links. (…)The top government official in each of France’s regions can order the closure of mosques, churches or other places of worship for six months if preachers are found to have incited attacks or glorified terrorism.
French law enforcement was monitoring 15,000 radical Muslims residing in the country, according to a report published by the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche last year. At least 4,000 of those Islamists “were deemed to be at highest risk of carrying out an attack,” another news report confirmed. Germany, with sizable and growing Muslim populations, is registering similar numbers as well.
Despite this impressive feat of inventory-keeping, many of the terrorists who have struck France in recent years have not been on the watch list — including the terrorist who drove through the crowds in Nice last year, killing 84 people.
Unlike President Macron, France’s right-wing leader Marine Le Pen was more straightforward in her diagnosis of the causes of the terrorism afflicting her country. “The Islamist ideology is a political-religious ideology that plans to enslave us and wages war on us,” asserted Le Pen earlier this month. According to the Front National leader, the new law is “soft” and “defensive”, and lacks teeth to go after France’s growing Islamist scene.
President Macron’s new law not only lacks teeth, but it also lack focus. In France, just like elsewhere in the Western Europe, the ideological considerations of open borders or political correctness trump the need to protect innocent lives. The progressive virtue signaling is dragging the country down a very dangerous road, and no amount of French legislation can fix this insanity.
Video: ‘French counter-terror law slammed for weakening human rights,’ the broadcaster France24 claims
[Cover image via Youtube]
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