In the context of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Minister of the Interior revealed the number of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts committed since the start of the year. But these do not reflect all the racist acts committed in France.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has consequences in France. The terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas and Israel’s military response have given rise to an increase in anti-religious acts on our territory since October 7, according to Gérald Darmanin. “There were 1,518 anti-Semitic acts or remarks” since the start of the war, launched the Minister of the Interior on Europe 1 on November 14.
After the comments on RMC by an imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Abdelali Mamoun, who has since apologized, asking that these anti-Semitic acts be “unveiled”Gérald Darmanin published the same day on the social network the number of anti-religious acts relating to the three great monotheisms. Since the beginning of the year, the Ministry of the Interior has been aware of “1,762 anti-Semitic acts”, “564 anti-Christian facts” And “131 anti-Muslim facts”.
A count to put into perspective
In view of these figures, Gérald Darmanin mentions in West France a “wave of anti-Semitism” since October 7. The number of anti-Semitic acts recorded until November 2023 is in fact more than three times higher than the 436 acts recorded throughout 2022. Despite “additional anti-Muslim acts” since the start of the conflict, according to the minister on Europe 1, the total number of these acts is currently down 30% in 2023 compared to the whole of 2022.
The number of anti-Christian acts, for its part, shows a drop of 39%, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior. However, Gérald Darmanin recalls in the columns of West France that“there has been a rise in anti-religious acts in France for several years”. Despite frequent reversals of curves over the years, all anti-religious acts are on the rise compared to the beginning of the 2010s, according to Place Beauvau.
However, Gérald Darmanin’s office invites us to put these data into perspective. He it’s about “raises from the ground” coming from “police and gendarmerie services and prefectures”, and not consolidated statistics. These figures, which are not intended to be exhaustive, should above all allow the ministry to refine “a strategy for deploying law enforcement” depending on the existing threat against these communities.
Undervalued figures
More complete figures will be released by the Ministerial Statistical Service for Internal Security (SSMSI) in a report published in March 2024, recalls the minister’s team. This annual document lists the infractions, offenses and crimes of a racist nature recorded by the police and the gendarmerie the previous year.
The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) also calls for taking this type of data with a pinch of salt, in its latest annual report. (PDF) on racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic facts published in September 2023. Real-time feedback to the ministry by territorial intelligence has the advantage of “distinguish between acts of an anti-Semitic nature, of an anti-Muslim character or racist facts of another character” – which the SSMSI report does not do.
But the mission of these field trips “is not to count all racist acts”, notes the CNCDH. In fact, the feedback from territorial intelligence, such as the figures given by Gérald Darmanin in mid-November, was in 2022 “four times lower” than the facts recorded by the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior.
More racist facts
This count is itself not exhaustive, recalls the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights. There are “intrinsic limits to current methods of collecting data on racism in France”underlines the latter, the data collected “based exclusively on the reports made”particularly with law enforcement and the judiciary.
There is therefore a problem of “massive under-reporting of racist acts to the authorities”creating a “black number”that is to say a set of“criminal acts which completely escape the radar of justice”. In short: the feedback from the field put forward by the Ministry of the Interior does not make it possible to bring out as many acts as the statistical feedback… which itself remains undervalued.
Furthermore, the figures put forward by Gérald Darmanin only concern anti-religious facts. However, territorial intelligence also reports to the ministry figures relating to non-religious racist and xenophobic acts, specifying whether these are acts against people perceived as Arab, black, Asian, Roma, etc. .
Thus, the violent racist attack of a gardener who worked in Villecresnes (Val-de-Marne), relayed by the press at the end of November, is not included in the count given by Gérald Darmanin. In recent years, anti-Arab acts recorded by territorial intelligence were even more numerous than anti-Muslim acts.
Incomplete data
Questioned by franceinfo, the minister’s office did not wish to communicate the number of non-religious racist acts, particularly against Arab people, committed since October 7, or the beginning of 2023.
“We only spoke about facts related to religion because violence against religious places and people, because of their religion, was the hot spot [des retombées de terrain].”
The Ministry of the Interiorat franceinfo
Although incomplete, what do these figures say about the violence committed against different religious communities? In his message on “tags, posters or banners (including ‘death to the Jews’, swastikas, etc.)”. Just under a quarter (22%) were “threats and insults”10% of the facts relating to “the apology for terrorism”8% of “damage to property”2% of “blows and wounds” and 2% of “attacks on community places”.
Concerning anti-Muslim facts, the Minister of the Interior spoke on Europe 1 of the “mosques which receive letters of death threats, threats of attack, numerous anti-Islam remarks, including on television sets”, without indicating the proportion relating to these facts. Finally, he did not give details on the anti-Christian acts.
Anti-Christian facts to qualify
In its report on the acts committed in 2022, the CNCDH nevertheless wrote that, although the anti-Christian acts had “significantly increased from 2021 to 2022”, “tvery few anti-Christian facts [étaient] truly offensive to religion.. “It is essentially petty crime, such as theft in religious buildings, or even unbalanced behavior, particularly in cemeteries.”added the document.
The vast majority of anti-Christian acts (93%) were, still in 2022, “attacks on places of worship and cemeteries”, and not attacks on people. Conversely, the CNCDH noted in 2022 that more than half (53%) of anti-Semitic acts and more than a third (38%) of anti-Muslim acts concerned “attacks on people”.
This difference even pushed the CNCDH to exclude anti-Christian facts from the presentation of all xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic facts, considering that they were of a nature too different from that of the facts targeting Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as than other populations victims of racism.