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Internet platform for studying Xenophobia, Radicalism and Problems of Intercultural communication.

Attacks

Attacks

France continues to be the country with the highest level of hate crimes. In early 2016, the French Ministry of the Interior published a report on combating racism, which provided data on hate crimes for the year 2015. According to this report, there have been 808 crimes of anti-Semitic nature (851 in 2014), 429 crimes directed against Muslims (133 in 2014) and 797 acts directed against Christians (678 in 2014).

According to the European Roma Information Bureau, no hate crimes against the Roma minority were committed in France in 2015 (in 2014, according to the same source, one child was killed; although according to other sources, a Roma teenager was physically assaulted in the suburbs of Paris in 2015). Data on attacks on Roma and representatives of other ethnic groups is not published by the French authorities, since they do not collect such statistics.

It is important to note that, unlike in Britain, where the anti-Semitic acts decreased by 22% in 2015, there was no such significant drop in such crimes in France - the number of anti-Semitic manifestations decreased by only 5%. In 2014 their number increased by 101%. Thus, the events in the Middle East led to a sharp rise in anti-Semitism, but the relatively calm period in Israel and Palestine had virtually no effect on the level of anti-Semitism in France.

Charlie Hebdo attack has resulted in a sharp increase in Islamophobia.

The watchdog SOS Homophobie recorded 152 cases of violence against the LGBT community in 2015, fewer than the 161 cases counted in 2014 . In total, in 2015, 2 186 crimes of an extremist nature occurred in France (in 2014 – 1 823). Of these, violent character (together with homophobic violent crimes) - 449 (397 in 2014).

In September 2019, a far-right man was put on trial in Paris for attempting to harm "Muslims, Jews, homosexuals" and even "kill President Macron" . Finally, on May 26, a white supremacist and former soldier with a passion for mass murders such as Tarrant and Breivik was arrested in Limoges after police saw on social media that he was talking more and more about attacking the Jewish community. He has already been convicted of illegal possession of a firearm in 2018, following a demonstration with the Yellow Vests movement.

According to data released by the Ministry of Interior on January 26, 2020 , the number of anti-Semitic incidents increased by 27%, thus making the situation worse, as in 2018, + 74% compared to 2017 (there were 541 incidents in 2018). Of the 687 reported incidents, the number of actions that are closest to "hate crimes" in the French legal context is decreasing (151), and the number of threats exceeds the number of such actions (536). It should be recalled that these figures are indeed disproportionate to the small number of Jews in France, who make up less than 1% of the population.

After two consecutive years of declining racist offenses, the number of racist incidents was 1,142, an increase of + 132% (496 in 2018), and 997 of those were threats. The number of incidents against Muslims is low (154), but it is also growing (+ 54%, 100 incidents in 2018). Among the 63 reported "actions" are two shootings at mosques, in Brest (June 2019) and Bayonne, where two elderly worshippers were seriously injured . The Brest attack, carried out by an unstable man with no extremist views who committed suicide after being shot, is notable because among the two wounded was a controversial imam, former hardline Salafist Rashid El-Jey, who was known as Rashid Abu Hodeifa. After 2015, el-Jay came to reject Salafism and embrace a more mainstream, anti-Jihadist and Moroccan traditional approach.

The issue of anti-Christian attacks is very poorly understood, of which 1,052 were reported in 2019 (1,063 in 2018). There were 996 actions and 56 threats reported. The Catholic Church hierarchy itself explains that most of the actions are actually committed by thieves who break into church premises in order to steal money or valuable items. In November 2019, such thieves even used car barriers to demolish the main gate of St. Mary's Cathedral of Oloron, a method of action that has also been used by terrorists. The conservative Catholic website Aletheia reports one mass desecration of about 100 graves in the Cognac cemetery (in the same year, as many graves were desecrated, in December, in the Westhoffen Jewish community cemetery in the Alsace region). The ideological reasons for those acts that are not committed by thieves have not been sufficiently explored: some speak of arch-conservatives, the right mentions anarchism and satanism.

As for attacks on LGBTQ people, government data put the number at 1,870, up from 1,380 in 2018 . 28% of these incidents are acts of violence and 33% are threats, leaving a large percentage (39%) unclassified. In 2018 and 2019, 75% of the complainants were male and 62% were under the age of 35. Frédéric Potier, who heads the Interagency Investigation against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia (DILCRAH), an official body within the Prime Minister's Office that has been working to combat discrimination since 2014, cites two reasons for the high number of incidents against LGBTQ people . The first is systematic discrimination, which until recently was very rarely reported to the police. The other is in response to laws such as the Same-Sex Marriage Act (2013) and the Medical Assisted Procreation Act for Lesbians and Single Women, which was passed in 2020 after much debate.

Discrimination against Roma, although we have done some consistent academic research on the topic, is poorly documented. Very few hate crimes have been reported, although in 2019 several Roma (at least 4) were severely beaten after fake news stories about the Roma community allegedly kidnapping children circulated on social media. Discrimination against Roma is primarily systemic. Children are denied access to the public education system; those who wish to become settled face great difficulty in obtaining subsidized housing; and some cities, despite being forced by law to settle temporarily in specially equipped areas, refuse to do so.

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