The new, six-month extension of emergency powers creates France’s longest state of emergency since the Algerian War in the 1950s. The new law restores or extends previous emergency provisions, such as empowering police to carry out raids and local authorities to place suspects under house arrest without prior judicial approval. It also expands those powers, for example allowing the police to search luggage and vehicles without judicial warrants. In addition it reinstates warrantless seizures of computer and cellphone data that France’s highest legal authority had struck down as unconstitutional, adding a few restrictions that still fall short of judicial oversight.
In separate reports in February, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented more than three dozen cases in which the use of these emergency powers violated universal rights to liberty, privacy, or freedoms of movement, association and expression. The two groups also found that the emergency acts lost suspects jobs, traumatized children, and damaged homes. The vast majority of those targeted were Muslims. Those interviewed said the actions left them feeling stigmatized and eroded their trust in the French authorities. The latest version of the emergency law risks compounding these effects.
The decisions to advance unconstitutional and discriminatory ‘security’ laws and policies following serious crimes threaten to undermine democracies while potentially strengthening states. But worryingly there are fewer and fewer loud voices for the rough and tumble consequences of maintaining a democratic form of governance as opposed to those who assert that a powerful state apparatus is needed if normalcy is to exist. The result may be the sleepwalking from governments for and by the people, to those that protect citizen-serfs and harshly discriminate against difference.
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