France Proposes Constitution Change After Terror Attacks Changes would shield emergency powers, strip some French-born terrorists of their citizenship By Stacy Meichtry and Noemie Bisserbe
http://www.wsj.com/articles/france-moves-to-shield-emergency-measures-from-legal-challenge-1450873849
PARIS—A year bookended by terror attacks is forcing France to reconsider some of the principles that underpin its national identity.
On Wednesday, the Socialist government of President François Hollande proposed amending the constitution to allow authorities to strip some natural-born citizens of their nationality if they are convicted of terrorism.
Another amendment would shield state-of-emergency police powers, such as to conduct warrantless searches and order house arrests, from court challenges.
The changes, which parliament is expected to approve next year, are a measure of how the French state—founded on the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity—is adapting to the threat posed by Islamic State and other extremist groups.
‘We are creating two categories of citizens in our constitution.’
“People wonder at times who we are, as French people, as a nation,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in introducing the measure, which he said carries great symbolism. “I understand its implications and the debates that may ensue.”
France fought a bloody revolution in pursuit of a secular republic open to all who respect its founding principles. In recent decades, the country threw its doors open to waves of migrants from former colonies in North Africa, becoming host to Europe’s biggest Muslim population. France also was a driving force behind the European Union and its common currency with Germany, dissolving national borders.
Part of the problem facing France now, lawmakers and officials say, is that it went to war against Islamic State—joining U.S. airstrikes in Iraq in late 2014, and in Syria a year later—without battening down the hatches at home.
“The French are just waking up to the fact that we, more than others, are a country at war,” said Alain Marsaud, a center-right lawmaker and former antiterrorism prosecutor.
The EU’s porous border system allows terror operatives and automatic weapons to enter France unchecked from neighboring countries. And France’s failure to integrate large pockets of its Muslim minority has fueled alienation among younger people, some of whom are flocking to Islamic State. More than 1,000 French citizens have made the trip to Iraq and Syria, Mr. Valls said, of whom about 250 have returned.
As recently as Monday, a senior member of Mr. Hollande’s cabinet played down suggestions that the government would expand its power to revoke citizenship.
“Stripping citizenship from people born French—who have belonged to the national community since their birth—raises a substantial problem on a fundamental principle: the right of soil,” Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told a radio station in Algeria.
On Wednesday, the government said its proposal to strip convicted terrorists of their French nationality would apply only to people with dual citizenship. Still, many French Muslims are also citizens of Algeria, Morocco and other North African countries.
“We are creating two categories of citizens in our constitution,” said Patrick Weil, a prominent French historian and political scientist, warning the new amendment threatened “social cohesion.”
When gunmen linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State killed 17 people in a January assault on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and a kosher market, more than three million people took to the streets across France in support of multiculturalism and freedom of expression.
In August, a gunman’s attack on a high-speed train to Paris plunged France into national soul-searching over why it took foreign passengers—three Americans and a Briton—to foil the attack with an act of bravery.
Mr. Hollande decorated the four men with France’s highest honor in a ceremony where the absence of French recipients was glaring.
In the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people, France went into a defensive crouch. Memorials formed around the sites of the attacks, but Mr. Hollande wasted no time in imposing a state of emergency, granting his government extrajudicial powers.
Protest marches—one way the French show solidarity—were curtailed for fear gunmen would target them.
That meant legions of activists who had been planning to descend on Paris for an international summit on climate change were no longer welcome to gather in public places.
On Nov. 26, one such activist, Joël Domenjoud, was placed under house arrest—one of 312 people given such an order.
In normal times, only people charged with a crime can be ordered—by a judge—to be held under house arrest, meaning they can’t leave their local municipality and must check in at a police station three times a day.
Under a state of emergency, the government can do so based on only “serious reasons” to believe a person could be a threat to public order.
Mr. Domenjoud’s arrest order labeled him part of a “radical environmentalist movement” without producing specific evidence, he said.
He went to court, but the judge refused to overturn the order. “I’m really worried,” Mr. Domenjoud said on the sidelines of a court hearing. “This is a dark sign for individual and collective freedoms.”
‘The French are just waking up to the fact that we, more than others, are a country at war.’
Among the more vivid signs of change brought by the terror attacks is France’s newfound willingness to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
France, which regards itself as a beacon of human rights, severed diplomatic ties with Mr. Assad at the outbreak of Syria’s civil war and led the way in accusing him of war crimes for allegedly slaughtering his own people with barrel bombs and chemical weapons.
The split with Mr. Assad, however, has also left French intelligence in the dark over who is entering and leaving Syrian territory.
“We’ve pulled the plug on intelligence. France no longer has any idea what’s going on in Syria,” said Michel Rocard, a former prime minister.
The fastest way to heal the intelligence breach, French officials say, is for Mr. Hollande and other world leaders to cut a deal with Mr. Assad that accelerates international talks aimed at building a transitional government in Syria.
Three days after the Nov. 13 attacks, Mr. Hollande assembled the French legislature inside the Château de Versailles—once home to the French monarchy—for a martial address, in which he first raised the possibility of changing the constitution.
In that same speech, Mr. Hollande identified Islamic State—not Mr. Assad—as the enemy of France. That pivot, a French official said, aimed to make France’s diplomatic overture to Mr. Assad “more explicit” even if France opposes him staying in power.
Islamic State “is who we’re fighting because France is the country of liberty, because we are the country of human rights,” Mr. Hollande said.
—Sam Schechner contributed to this article.
Comments are closed.
