The government assumes. Questioned in the Senate on Wednesday April 12 during questions to the government, Elisabeth Borne indicated that she “no longer understands” the positions of the League of Human Rights. “I know the history of this great association. For a long time, the history of republican emancipation and that of the LDH have intertwined. Universalism was a common ground,” she said, adding: ” I no longer understand some of his positions. […] has emerged in its ambiguities in the face of radical Islamism, and it has been consolidated for a few months”.
The tenant of Matignon responded to an interpellation by the Communist senator Eliane Assassi, who castigated the “threats of unbearable gravity” expressed by Gérald Darmanin against the association. A few days earlier, the Minister of the Interior, heard in the Senate on the action of the police during the prohibited gathering, on March 25, against a mega-basin in Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, and protests against pension reforms. “I don’t know about the subsidy given by the state (to the LDH) but it deserves to be looked at,” he said. The organization had deployed about twenty observers in Sainte-Soline, and had accused the police and gendarmerie of “immoderate and indiscriminate use of force” as well as “obstructing the intervention of relief”. Following this first intervention, Patrick Baudouin, president of the association, was indignant at a “slippage” by Gérald Darmanin, assuring that the “only period when we were thus hindered was Vichy”.
This is clearly not the Prime Minister’s position. There is “no question of lowering, in principle, the subsidy of this or that association”, she indicated, continuing: “But dialogue with the associations on their actions is also a responsibility, since it it’s about public funding. According to her, the LDH has drifted in recent years, presenting “ambiguities” “in the face of radical Islamism”. She also accuses the association of having “attacked a decree prohibiting the transport of weapons by destination to Sainte-Soline”. “The LDH has been successively accused of being on the side of the victims and the culprits, yet it is only on the side of the rule of law. By attacking it and instilling doubt, the government does not hardly innovates and plays a dangerous game for democracy,” the organization said on Twitter. Relations that have rarely been so strained in history. Emmanuel Naquet, doctor in history from Sciences Po Paris, associate researcher and author of For Humanity: The League for Human Rights, from the Dreyfus affair to the defeat of 1940 (ed. Pur), attests to this with L’Express.
L’Express: Relations between the LDH and the government are particularly bad. Have they ever been so strained in the past?
Emmanuel Naquet: The history of the association is marked by moments of tension with the executive. It was born in 1898 from the Dreyfus affair and denounced a State crime – that of military power – and this cost him political prosecution, without effect, moreover. Its founding president at the time, the former Minister of Justice Ludovic Trarieux, pushed the young League to go into battle, not only through petitions, but also through meetings and demonstrations. It is then, for one of his first public positions to “bring help and assistance to any person whose freedom would be threatened or whose right would be violated”.
But there are other moments: she opposes the policy of a former Dreyfusard who became Minister of War, ex-Colonel Picquart – he had participated in the revelation of false products by intelligence –, defending the freedom of conscience of officers sanctioned for going to mass in civilian clothes. A model of commitment is thus gradually forged that is based on legal and ethical interventions against the arbitrariness of the state and what I would call the unreason of the state.
What were the LDH’s relations with power during the 20th century?
In 1898, the association was founded for the protection of individual rights, but its mandate extended to the defense of public freedoms (condemnation of “rogue laws” against pacifists and trade unionists) and to the demand for social rights with a support for striking workers in the midst of the emergence of trade unions. It can then push for legislative changes: the law of separation of Church and State (1905) is partly inspired by the project of its second president, the Jauresian Francis de Pressensé.
At its height, in the 1930s – but this is valid before – it maintained its independence. Its general secretaries and presidents refuse to go and plead this or that cause in the antechamber of power. It was through its numerical and even more ethical strength that it was more or less understood, not without difficulty, during the times of the Cartel des gauches (1924-1926) or the Front Populaire (1936-1938). In fact, it opposed powers of different political colors: closer to us, that of the socialist Guy Mollet, those of General de Gaulle or Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. And when the alternation took place, in 1981, with the arrival of the presidency of François Mitterrand, policies carried out by ministers were questioned, including that of the Keeper of the Seals Robert Badinter, a former leaguer, and despite the abolition of the death penalty and the abolition of special courts.
LDH is traditionally classified on the left. Does it have a political orientation?
The LDH is a plural association, but it is clear that this civil society in action is the bearer of the fundamentally revolutionary ideals of 1789, but also of 1848, as shown by its participation in the first centenary in 1948. The republican triptych is at the heart of his thoughts and actions. The defense of rights and freedoms give rise to it and evolve in politics. If there is no human rights policy, as the failures of the ministries more or less responsible for this field have shown, human rights are political. It should also be remembered, for example, that in the last two presidential elections, she called for blocking the far-right candidate, but did not call for support for this or that candidate in the first round.
Has the LDH ever been the subject of threats on its subsidies?
I do not believe. Three-quarters of its funding is based on the contribution of citizens who are committed to the causes it defends and, due to increased activity, it has always been in deficit.