OSCE HDIM 2017 Breakfast Side-Event

Racism,
And Rise of The Police State
In Western Democracies
19 September 2017
8:15am to 9:45am at the Warsaw National Stadium
Meeting Room 2
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 The Justice & Liberties for All Committee (JLC) is a Paris based human
rights organisation. Through class actions, popular education, research
and advocacy, its work focuses on combatting racism and
reconquering lost civil liberties.
In many western societies, racism has proven to have become
mainstream while feeding the narrative for repressive measures. The
military victory against nazism in Europe did not lead to an ideological
struggle against racism as a whole, far from that. The intellectual
mechanisms that led to the antisemitic laws of the twentieth century in
France or Germany and then on to the holocaust have not not been
dismantled.
The idea that racism is a far right monopoly is contradicted by the
realities of identity politics pushed by mainstream political parties
whether in power or in the opposition, media outlets, intellectuals, state
institutions and even state sanctioned antiracist organisations. None
have resisted pressure from white supremacist groups or the
temptation of diverting public opinion with islamodiversion. While such
ideological biases have empowered once underground groups,
governments have not shied away from passing laws of exception
governing the bodies of women (headscarf ban, full face veil ban,
Burkina ban, veiled nannies ban), curtailing freedom of speech,
extending the powers of the police while weakening those of the
judiciary, legalising mass surveillance and privacy violation, legitimising
arbitrary raids, house arrests, deportation and even extra judicial
assassination programs.
Such violations of human rights and civil liberties did not occur
overnight. For over three decades, the normalisation of racist
discourse in western societies has been accompanied with the passing
of ever more repressive measures. Be it the current state of
emergency combined with the stop jihadism campaign in France, the
PREVENT duty in the UK or the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)
in the United States, local Muslim communities are being portrayed as
the enemy within with the officially proclaimed goal of targeting an
extraordinary enemy with much needed exceptional powers.
However, what was once sold to public opinion as exceptional, has
now become the norm. What has so far been used against Muslim
communities is now being used against dissenters of all kinds, social
movements, environmentalists, whistleblowers, journalists or
supporters of migrant rights.
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In 2016, in the wake of the state of emergency declaration, the head of
the Paris bar association went as far as declaring that France can shift
from a democracy to a dictatorship within one week while the
countrys ombudsman Mr Jacques Toubon declared that 99% of the
state of emergency measures will target Muslim citizens. The situation
is no better in the United States with the Trump administration
empowering white supremacist groups and police brutality against
radicalised populations. In the United Kingdom, participation of the
government in the rendition program, the handling of the Snowden files
by the GCHQ, the arrest of David Miranda followed by that of
Mohammed Rabbani for refusing to hand over access to their personal
IT devices have displayed to the rest of the world the degree of
impunity enjoyed by government agencies and the absence of
protection of citizen privacy.
To better understand the dynamics of structural racism and how it is
serving repressive agendas, the JLC will organise a side event during
the OSCEs 2017 Human Dimension Implementation Meeting titled
Racism and the rise of the police state in western democracies in
order to answer the following questions:
1. How has islamophobia been used to justify repression and is it a
point of objective convergence between terrorist ideology?
2. Aside from communication campaigns, is there a reason for western
governments to not take racism more seriously?
3. Is it legitimate to speak of police states and if so, what would that
imply to the notion of democracy and the rule of law in western
societies?
4. Is there an objective alliance between anti-muslim racism and
terrorist ideology?
5. What is the role of semantics in blurring the lines between targeting
terrorist activity and political opposition?
6. What assessment can be made of the strategy adopted against
terrorism for the past twenty years?
Following their presentations, speakers submit their recommendations
to civil society and governments.
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 Speakers

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 Speakers
Yasser Louati
President, Justice & Liberties For All Committee (JLC), France

Rachel Herger
Human Rights Solicitor, Defend The Right To Protest, United Kingdom

Hussam Ayloush
Executive Director, Los Angeles Office, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), USA

Ibrahim Mohamoud
Communication Officer, CAGE, UK

Malia Bouattia
Co-Founder Students Not Suspects / Educators Not Informants Network, UK

Questions & Answers

Conclusions and Recommendations to the OSCE

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