Pak Sahafat – A lawsuit was filed by two associations over the sending of a text message containing Islamophobic content and its targeted sending to French Jews during the election campaign of Eric Zemour, one of the failed presidential candidates.
According to an Pak Sahafat News agency report from AFP on Wednesday, two nights before the first round of the French elections, a text message was sent to the French Jews, signed by the far-right candidate of the “re-conquest” party. In one of the messages, Zemour was called “the only person” who “condemned the spread of Islam in France, which caused the destruction of this country.” “The form of anti-Semitism that is killing today is Islamic,” another text message said.
The text message made headlines because it was sent to French Jews on purpose, indicating that Zamoud’s campaign had access to personal information. This shows that the personal information of individuals, including their religion and race, has been made available to campaign officials.
The Jewish Students’ Union and the “I Condemn” (International Action for Justice) Association are the plaintiffs in the case, and the Paris prosecutor’s office launched an investigation yesterday (Tuesday). This case has been handed over to the Department for Combating Individual Crimes.
Under French law, disclosing religious beliefs or racial or ethnic origins without a person’s consent carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of € 300,000.
The National Committee for Information and Freedoms has also begun investigating the case. The commission states that the use of personal data disclosing religious beliefs is “prohibited” unless the person expressly consents to the use of such data for one or more specific purposes.
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Three other organizations, including the International Union against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICA), the Racist Victims Relief (SOS Racism) and the Movement for Friendship between Nations (Mrap), told AFP yesterday that a complaint had been lodged yesterday.
Born to a Jewish family of Algerian immigrants, the controversial far-right candidate in the first round of the French presidential election won 7% of the vote and did not advance to the second round.
The first round of the 2022 French presidential election was held on Sunday (April 10 / April 21), with Macron winning 27.6 percent of the vote and Le Pen 23 percent in the second round.
For the second round of elections, Zemour has backed the far-right candidate and representative of the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen.
France’s Muslim minority, which has always faced the issue of hijab and restrictions on veiled women under secular French law, was also targeted in this year’s election campaign by Islamophobic statements by far-right parties representing Le Pen and Zemour. French Muslims and immigrants are more at risk of extremist ideology coming to power than other groups. Exact statistics on the number of Muslims living in France are never published, but estimates indicate that there are at least 5.7 million Muslims in France.