TAKING LIBERTIES

Diana Geddes finds that

the French have fewer freedoms than they would like to think

Paris THE signatories of Charter 88 complain that the British, brought up to believe that their liberty is the envy of the world, have seen that liberty eroded in recent years with the result that they now have 'fewer legal rights and less democracy than many other West Europeans'.

The charter was drawn up to mark the third centenary of Britain's `Glorious Re- volution' of 1688. In this bicentenary year of the French Revolution and the Declara- tion des Droits de l'Homme a du Citoyen, let us take a look at civil liberties and individual rights across the other side of the Channel in a country whose citizens are also brought up to believe that their liberty is the envy of the world.

Indeed, many of the French would claim that they had invented human rights. Ask the average Frenchman today if he is free, and without hesitation he will reply, 'Of course!' Asked in a recent poll if they felt that the three cardinal revolutionary prin- ciples of liberty, equality and fraternity were well applied in France today, an amazing 74 per cent of the French replied `yes' for liberty, though they were a lot less sure about equality and fraternity. And yet there are many ways in which the French are a lot less free than the British, despite their written constitution, only they do not seem to notice it, or complain about it, as we do.

The French criminal justice system is in many ways a scandal. I would not like to find myself on the wrong side of the law in France. The French have no habeas cor- pus. Anyone who is deemed capable of helping the police with their inquiries can be detained for up to 24 hours, even if he personally is not suspected of having com- mitted a crime. During that time, he may be subjected to extremely tough interroga- tion, including psychological pressures (physical violence is not allowed, but is often used), without having the right to contact anyone, not even a lawyer.

After 24 hours, he must be brought before a magistrate who may renew the detention for a further 24 hours. At the end of that period, he must either be charged (inculpe) or released. The grounds

for the charge may be extremely flimsy, however. Suspected drug dealers can be held for up to four days and suspected terrorists for up to six days before having to be charged or released. If detained, the accused may languish for months, or years, in prison before his case is brought to trial.

His fate is in the hands of one man — the juge d'instruction or examining magistrate, who is responsible for carrying out the preliminary investigations and preparing the case for the prosecution. Half police- man, half judge, the examining magistrate may often decide to detain someone in prison simply in order to extort a confes- sion.

Successive governments have issued guidelines reminding examining magis- trates that detention must be the exception and liberty the rule, but to no avail. Around 40 per cent of the prisoners in French jails are on remand awaiting trial -- double the proportion in Britain. Even when the case finally comes before the courts, the accused cannot be certain that he will get a fair trial. Although supposedly independent, the French judiciary is highly politicised. Two main rival unions represent the judges, one on the Right and one on the Left. Judges depend on the government for their pro- motion and for all senior appointments. Time and again, the judiciary has been seen to have been influenced by political pressures. There was universal astonishment when Georges Ibrahim Abdullah, the Lebanese terrorist at one time suspected of being responsible for the 1986 Paris bombings, was given a life sentence for his part in two murders, despite the public prosecutor's extraordinary 'plea' to the special non-jury court not to impose a sentence of more than ten years. This was seen as a rare example of judicial independence in the face of pressures both from government and from Abdullah's terrorist friends.

In common with all his predecessors, the present minister of justice, Pierre Arpail- lange, himself a former judge, has sworn that he will not tamper with the supposed independence of the judges. But the French remain unconvinced: some 50 per cent say they do not have confidence in their system of justice. 'As much as the Anglo-Saxons revere their judicial system because they believe it defends them from the government, as much the French sus- pect their system of being an instrument of government,' Robert Badinter, president of the Conseil Constitutional, admitted when he was justice minister four years ago.

In France, particularly in Paris, one often has the impression that one is living in a police state. Clumps of policemen, armed to the teeth, lurk at every street corner. Van loads of riot police descend out of the blue at the first hint of any demonstration, and there are many in Paris. Every government minister seems to have his motorised police escort, with wailing sirens, brushing motorists aside and mowing down pedestrians.

You learn not to meddle with the French police. If you do, you are liable to get shot.

A policeman is only supposed to draw his gun if he feels that his or another's life is in danger. But stories of what are euphemisti-

cally known as bavures or blunders by trigger-happy police are legion. They do

not even make the news unless someone is actually killed — and that is not uncom- mon.

An exception was a particularly out- rageous incident in the south of France the weekend before last in which a woman and her two sons were fired on seven times by plainclothes policemen as they were driv- ing peacefully along a deserted road in the Var in the middle of the night on their way to the station at Marseilles. Luckily, no one was killed, but one of the sons was hit by a bullet in the shoulder.

As Le Monde wryly commented the next day, the family no doubt were wrong to have taken fright when their car was suddenly blocked by another unmarked car and three men jumped out, looking as if they were about to draw their guns. Rodol- phe Migeon, aged 19, who was driving, understandably thought it was a hold-up by gangsters, and immediately tried to re- verse, only to be met by gunfire. It was only afterwards that the men finally ex- plained that they were policemen carrying out a routine spot-check. The family has filed a complaint, but there is no indepen- dent police watchdog in France.

Since the wave of Paris bombings in 1986, the police have had the right to stop anyone, at any time, in any (public) place for an identity check. Everyone, French or foreign, is supposed to carry his identity papers with him at all times. If he cannot prove his identity on the spot, he may be arrested and detained for up to four hours. He has no right to call his lawyer, though he may inform a friend or next of kin. And don't expect a French policeman ever to say 'please', or 'thank you' or 'good day, sir': that's not their style.

Disputes between a citizen and the state or public body are dealt with through special administrative tribunals with an ultimate right of appeal to the Conseil d'etat. But the system is cumbersome and extremely slow. It may take years for the wrong to be righted or damages (usually fairly paltry) to be awarded. Since 1973, the French have had 'mediators' to help them pursue their grievances against the state, but they do not have the scope or power of the British Ombudsman.

The Conseil Constitutional rules on all matters touching the Constitution, includ- ing civil liberties. But an ordinary citizen has no right of appeal to that body; matters may only be referred to the Conseil Consti- tutional by a group of at least 60 deputies or senators. And it is only in the past few years that a French citizen has had the right to appeal directly to the European Com- mission on Human Rights.

The British may feel that their govern- ment is increasingly interfering in their lives, but the French have always had to put up with a degree of state interference that the British would think quite intoler- able. They may rail against it, but they accept it. They feel that it is the price they have to pay for the freedom they enjoy in other areas. It is significant that there are no English words for etatisme or dirigisme. The nanny state is everywhere. The French tend to believe that the state knows best what is good for them. That is why they do not get as excited as Anglo-Saxons over affairs like the sinking of the Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior. They simply accept that it is all 'in the interests of the state'. M. Charles Pasqua, the interior minister in the last Chirac government, stated baldly that the interests of the state should always override those of democra- cy.

As for democracy, the British may feel that they have a despot at their head at present, but she is at least theoretically accountable to Parliament. The French president is accountable to no one except the French people, once every seven years. He has quite extraordinary powers, much greater than those of an American presi- dent, let alone a British prime minister. When he has an absolute majority in parliament (which until 1986 all Fifth Republic presidents enjoyed), he can do virtually whatever he wishes. President Mitterrand has now devolved some of his power to the government, but he could reclaim it whenever he feels like it.

The present government, supported by only a relative majority in parliament, is probably the most 'democratic' that France has had for a long time in so far as it has to make concessions to other parties in order to get its bills voted. But if it should ever find its way totally blocked in parliament, it could, with the approval of the president, simply bypass parliament and rule by decree on a very great number of issues.

One area in which the French are more free than the British is in their right to expression and publication of opinion. There are no blasphemy laws in France. There is no Official Secrets Act, though the government may invoke the secret defense at any time in order to explain its refusal to divulge certain information. (The real reason often has little to do with French defence interests.) Libel laws exist, but they are weak and the damages awarded minimal compared with Britain.

Restrictions on the reporting of criminal cases are virtually non-existent. There is supposed to be a ban on revealing informa- tion arising out of the preliminary inves- tigations by the examining magistrate, but it is almost totally ignored. The French press can and does say whatever it likes in such cases. A man has merely to be arrested in connection with, say, the rape of a little girl for-his photo to be splashed over the papers the next day under the caption: This is the monster who raped the little Celine!'

Unlike the British, the French do have a law prohibiting the invasion of individual privacy, however. After Brigitte Bardot was taken to hospital suffering from a suspected overdose of sleeping pills on her 50th birthday, for example, she successful- ly sued a paper under the atteinte a la vie privee law for suggesting that she had tried to commit suicide. On another occasion, she successfully sued a photographer for taking photos of her without her permis- sion in the grounds of her home in the south of France.

The right to the privacy of one's own property is enshrined in the 1789 Declara- tion of Human Rights and may only be breached by a tax inspector, a customs official, a policeman with a warrant or — a huntsman. If your property is under a certain size (around 250 acres in the mountains or 50 acres in the plains), a huntsman has the right to pursue his quarry onto your land, even though you may be fiercely opposed to bloodsports. Hunting rights were also acquired under the Re- volution.

Article 4 of the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights defines liberty as 'being able to do anything which does not harm anyone else'. Only the law, drawn up by a democratic assembly, could set limits to that liberty, the Declaration states. But it is sometimes difficult to understand how anyone else could be harmed by my failing to register my child at the local town hall within three days of its birth, or by my giving it a name not accepted by the state, or by my refusing to undergo an obligatory medical examination (with tests for dis- eases like syphilis) before I marry.

Discussing civil liberties in France with a French lawyer who had made a special study of the subject, I expressed surprise that he and other French 'intellectuals' should find their country so free when there were so many glaring abuses of their liberties. 'If you are rich and well- educated, France is an amazing country to live in. We have complete intellectual freedom. But if you are a poor immigrant who brushes up against the law, then you could have a problem,' he admitted. And, as another leading lawyer, Jean-Louis Bre- din, wrote of his fellow-countrymen in Le Monde the other day: 'We seem to prefer our security to our liberty.'

Would any Charter 88 supporter really like to swap Britain for France, leaving wine, women and food aside?