Sat Sri Akaal Greetings Shalom Namaste Salaam Alikum
14th Issue
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FRENCH SIKHS CHOOSE THE PENAL WAY TO DEFEND THEIR RIGHTS AND PRESENT COMPLAINTS FOR RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION !!
Paris
Date 12.08.2004.Two
French Sikhs: Mr
Shingara Singh MANN (ORGANISATION FRANCO SIKH ) and Kudrat Singh MÉNIR (UNITED
SIKHS) both started a litigation to make
their fundamental rights to wear the 5 Ks’ to be recognized by France
and they have also submitted a complaint for religious discrimination in front
of the Court.
This
step appeared to them the most appropriate, from the strictly democratic point
of view, in order to recognize the fundamental rights of the sikhs in France and
beyond that , to contribute to enrich the public debate in this country while
trying to recall that it is on
the concern for others that
is based the ethics of a society.
Because
as a matter of fact today as thus the response of the authorities to multiple
mails and requests shows, as well as past actions in front of administrative
courts, the recent dysfunctions of the authorities such as the Commission on
secularity and adoption of new laws concerning religious signs : the
baptized sikhs which recognize
themselves in the tradition established in 1699 by their tenth gourou are
considered in France by the authorities as the members of
a non majority religion, to which they refuse by express and tacit manner
the right to the distinctive signs on which rests the accomplishment of their
worship which comprises an individual aspect as significant as its collective
one and by way of
consequence their membership of their congregation and their spiritual
existence, at the
contempt of the principle of
non-discrimination.
The
belonging of this tradition to the cultural and religious inheritance of
humanity is recognized today by all the international authorities, from U.N.O to
UNESCO. Can the belonging to this faith still be looked like a non majority
religion thus as an identittary particularism and simultaneously struck
by discrimination and even exclusion, without contradiction of the Human
Rights, the Right to freedom of worship, the principle of non-discrimination,
the constitutional Law, the European Right ?.
Concretely,
for the sikhs because of systematic forbidings which form obstacle to the
respect of their main rite and religious obligations, discriminations are,
according to us, frequent in France.
We should write increasingly frequent, like :
Wearing of Kirpan, the "ritual knife of the sikhs" (indicated
thus by name in the Report of 2003 of the Council of State, the highest judicial
body of France)
-
- Wearing of the turban on the photographs of identity
-
- Driving of the motor bicycles even downtown
-
- Wearing of the helmet for the workers of the building
-
- And, of course, starting from the next school re-entry, because of the
new law on the religious signs at school, risks of exclusion will weigh
permanently on the sikhs pupils even if their behavior is as flawless than
before.
Mr.
Shingara Singh MANN brings back to us what he wrote to the public prosecutor:
"Precisely,
for more than thirty years that I reside in France, (I have been founder member
of first Gurdwara in France) and inspite of my naturalization, these basic and
thus constitutional rights are still not guaranteed to me because of my
religion. This
constitutes in my opinion an inequality
of treatment.
On
the photographs which accompany my decree of naturalisation, I was posing with
my turban.
A
few months ago, my driving licence was robbed
I
then tempted to make renew my driving licence by the services of police of my
residence. But it was
opposed to me that I will have henceforth to provide photographs on which I
figure "bare headed ".
I at once wrote to the Minister of Interior Affairs.
This letter has remained unanswered.
However
on my preceding driving licence, I was reproduced on the photo capped of my
turban.
That
is because behalf of
a legal argumentation presented by my previous lawyer in front of the French
administrative justice on August 4, 1998 concerning my identity picture I
obtained an authorization October 14, 1998 delivered by the government which
gave me, following this argumentation, satisfaction.
But
it also caused the stop of the procedure and by a special request of the
ministery did not allow me and thus all the Sikhs to obtain a binding decision.
I thus do not any more have great hope in the French administrative
justice.
Mr.
Kudrat Singh MÉNIR who is a "white" Sikh, he was born in France and
choosed to request the baptism in Khalsa at the time of a stay in Anandpur
Sahib, also raised in his complaint that :
« In
spite of the many legislative texts, pacts and International Conventions signed
and ratified by France, we are like all the sikhs, in regard of fundamental
freedoms and basic rights, treated in my country as a citizens of second
category subjected to all the changes of policy which constitute according to us
an abuse of power from the state and a discrimination. »
Both
complaints report that :
This
situation knew its paroxysm when :
-
the Commission Report on secularity was returned on December 11, 2003
The
case of the Sikhs is neither treated, neither considered, nor approached in the
reflexion carried out by the commission on the religious distinctive signs.
No sikh has been auditioned.
This silence constitutes in my opinion an inequality of treatment because
the sikhs are not so much fewer
in France than the members of other communities whose representatives were
convened and auditioned by the commission (hindouïsts and assyro-chaldéens
christians for exemple). Mr. the Mediator of the Republic however wrote to the
President of the Republic, with the handing-over of this report that he had
auditioned the representatives of all the religions and philosophical options.
Secularity
is defined in the report of this commission as built on the neutrality of the
State. « neutrality
of the State is the first condition of secularity.... neutrality and equality
goes hand in hand? (2.2.1)
This report quotes like asset:
respect which the State guarantees to the various spiritual or religious
options, no interference of the political power, creation of conditions
favourable to the freedom of worship, the protection of the religions not
majoritary1.2.3) the historians who advised M.
Bernard STASI could not
by their quality be unaware of the fact that a law on the distinctive
signs would threatened the very existence of the sikh religion before some other
consequence. The case
of a road driver also constrained to sue in front of justice in Germany is
expressly quoted in the Commission Report "
Kudrat
Singh finishes: "I
have known extremely well, I live here for fifty years, that is very difficult
in France to put on the table he question of the right to difference"
However,
the right to difference is a right which is recognized at the international
level.
At
the time of his presidential campaign, in 1981, the socialist candidate François
Mitterrand introduced the concept of "right to the difference" by
affirming that (56th proposal of the Mitterrand candidate):
"is to wound a people with deepest of itself than to strike it in
its culture…. We
proclaim the "right to difference" ".
Freedom
of thoughts are the most solid legal pillars for the right to difference:
within the freedom of consciousness, however refused to the sikhs who are
consequently deeply upset and wounded by this exclusion.
The freedom of consciousness
is accompanied in French right of the freedom of expression which is,
actually, the right to publicly express one’s attachment with a spiritual,
religious, philosophical, cultural or political belief, in a word, to assume
one’s difference. The
right to difference passes thus in France by the application of the principle
of non-discrimination.
In
addition, the concept of right to difference in France rises in an increasingly
marked principle: the
principle of plurialism. Proclaimed
like "objective of constitutional value" at the time of decisions
concerning "the freedom of communication" and "the plurialism of
the sociocultural currents of expression" (the constitutional Council, July
27, 1982, Rec., p. 48), the respect of plurialism "is one of the conditions
of the democracy" (the constitutional Council, September 18, 1986, p. 141).
The
principle of the right to difference
was affirmed by the U.N.E.S.CO.
in 1978 in a text of general interest, the Declaration on the race and
racial prejudices. At
the international level, the concept of right to
difference is generally treated through the question of the minorities,
not recognized by the French law.
The international Pact relating to the civil and political rigottes
affirms that "in the States where there are ethnic minorities, religious or
linguistic, the people belonging to these minorities cannot be deprivated from
the right to have in common with the other members of their group, their own
cultural life, to profess and practise their own religion, or to employ their
own language" (article 27 of the P.I.D.C.P.)
The
General meeting of the United Nations also adopted, December 18, 1992, a
"Declaration of the rights of the people belonging to national minorities
or ethniques, religious and linguistic" (R.G.D.I.P., 1993, pp. 500-502).
This text invites the States, by its article 1, to protect "the
existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic
identity of the minorities, on their respective territories and (to be
supported) the introduction of the conditions suitable to promote this
identity".
This
concern of the protection of the minorities is shared by the pope Jean-Paul II,
who affirms in the sense that it is necessary "to think and live the
various cultural identities and to work toward their full setting as a common
richness of the cultural inheritance of humanity".
And the pope to add that "beyond all the differences which
characterize the individuals and the people, (...) the various cultures are
actually only different manners to tackle the question of the direction of the
personal existence" (Message of His Holliness the Pope Jean-Paul II infront
the General meeting of the United Nations, October 5, 1995).
All
these facts according to Mr. Shingara Singh and Kudrat Singh, in an intrinsic
way as by the agreement of their effects,
could constitute:
A
discrimination made by a person or several persons who are
agent of the public autority or charged of a mission of public utility,
in the exercice or at the occasion of the exercice of its (their) functions or
its (their) mission in the point that it :
Considering:
The international Pact relating to the civil and politic rights open for
signature in New York on 19 December 1966, and ratified by France on January 29
1981
-
Article 2: "
the States left with the present Pact take the engagement to respect and
guarantee to all the individuals being on their territory and concerning their
competence the rights recognized in this Pact, without any distinction, in
particular of race, color, sex, language, religion, or political opinion or
any other opinion, national or social origin, of fortune, birth or any
other situation ".
-
Art. 18:
"1 Any person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion; this right
implies freedom to have or adopt a religion or a conviction of its choice, as
well as freedom to express its religion or its conviction, individually or
joint, so much in public than in private by the worship and accomplishment of
the rites, the practices and the teaching. ",
has
refused us the
benefit of a right granted by the law, which is an offence envisaged and
repressed by articles 225-1 and 432-7-1° of the French Penal code which defines
the concept of discrimination as follows:
-
"Constitutes a discrimination any distinction made between the
physical people at a rate of their origin, of their sex, their, their health
family circumstances, of their handicap, their manners, their opinions
political, their trade-union activities, of their membership or their
not-membership, true or supposed, with an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a
given religion.
Also
the sikhs of France could assert that :
Without
recognizing the concept of minority, France however took part in the Conference
of the United Nations against Racism, the related Xenophobia and Intolerance of
Durban in August-September 2001.
It approved and signed its conclusions but did not ratify them yet.
Paragraph
67 of this treaty states:
-
(the States signatories) let us recognize that members of certain groups
with distinct cultural identity have to deal with obstacles resulting from a
complex interaction of ethnic, religious and different factors as well as their
own traditions and habits and we invite the States to adopt against obstacles
which this interaction of factors gives birth to,
measurements, policies and programs aiming at the eradication of
racism, racial discrimination, related xenophobia and intolerance.
It
is for all these reasons and in the hope to see one day guaranteed their freedom
against injustice and the respect of the principle of equality towards the sikhs
of France that Mr Shingara Singh MANN and Kudrat Singh MÉNIR will as well as
other legal actions impulse litigations for the offence of religious
discrimination of which they estimate to have been victims in France in their
quality of member of the sikh religion, like all their co-religionists.
Paris
Date 12.08.2004
S.Shingara
Singh MANN
S. Kudrat Singh MÉNIR
Tel:
0033616176205