The previous weekend’s protests were the second time the French public took to the streets in the last month. There has been a sudden call for action amongst the citizenry, mainly due to two reasons. The first being the unwarranted beating of Micheal Zecler, who by profession is a music composer. Zecler was kicked and punched for several minutes by three officers at his studio in Paris on the 21st of November. Over and above the ‘intentional violence’ charge, all four officers have been accused of forgery. A charge that is related to the police report filed after the incident, which stated that police officers acted in the following manner after they smelled cannabis and the fact that Mr. Zecler had resisted being searched. According to the prosecutor, the police officers involved agreed that they had acted out of panic, after Micheal Zecler, resisted them in the cramped surroundings of his office. The incident immediately caught the public’s attention. President Emmanuel Macron himself described the incident as “unacceptable” and “shameful”, demanding quick government proposals on how to rebuild trust between police and citizens.

In terms of the broader topic of contention between the authorities and the general public, we see a great amount of dissatisfaction resulting from the Micheal Zecler case, however, this dissatisfaction soon turned into frustration, which in turn led to a call for action after the French parliament tabled a security bill. Article 24 of which makes it a criminal offence to publish images of on-duty police officers with the intent to harm their “physical and psychological integrity”. Advocates of the proposed bill say that the legislation aims at protecting police officers from harassment and targeting on social media. On the other hand, a majority of the French population believes that media freedom and the citizens’ right to film police action must not be impeded, as the French police are under intense scrutiny and have received severe backlash, after the Zecler case.

In response to the recent protests and strong criticism, the government has received. Macron’s ruling party said that they plan to rewrite the article that curbs rights to circulate images of police officers. President Emmanuel Macron himself has acknowledged the fact that people of color are more likely to be stopped by police for ID checks than white. To deal with this problem he proposed setting up a platform for citizens to log unwarranted searches. The President’s recent remarks have, however, not settled well with the police unions, who have strictly denied the statement by the President. What remains to be seen is if the steps proposed by the ruling party and the President will be enough to pacific the people, so at the draw to a close the string of protests around the country, and more importantly to see if the steps will be enough from a substantive point of view.

Featured Image By: United World

The post PARIS PROTESTS AGAINST MACRON’S SECURITY LAW appeared first on WISER WORLD.

These attacks set in motion a chain of action. Minister of Interior Gérald Darmanin announced the elimination of people who spread hate through the internet. Baraka City which is a humanitarian NGO has been dissolved by the government because it took pleasure in such terror attacks. The government has additionally, threatened to ban Le Collectif Contre l’islamophobie en France, a nonprofit organization that claims to combats anti-Muslim racism: According to Mr Darmanin, the C.C.I.F.’s work is against the Republic of France.

After the attacks, Macron spoke in favour of Mr Paty by reaffirming the right to free speech, including the right to satire and blasphemes. President Emmanuel Macron believes that Mr Paty was killed for embodying the French Republic and vowed to hold “laïcité” up high. This has angered Muslims not only in France but all around the world. Thousands of people in Pakistan, Lebanon, and other Palestinian territories entered into a fury after Macron vowed to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Mohammad. The decision of the Charlie Hebdo magazine to republish the cartoon caricature has also been seen as an act of violence against Muslims. A crowd in Bangladesh was seen burning an effigy of Macron, while a rally in Pakistan resorted to throwing stones at the police who were trying to control the angry mob. France itself remains on edge after the attacks and Macron ordered 7000 soldiers to guard the schools and religious sites. Macron’s latest speech in favour of the caricature has skewered relations between Turkey and France further. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Macron of Islamophobia and went ahead to question his mental health. Erdoğan has since then called on Muslim countries to boycotts all French goods.

Dalia Mogahed, a former advisor on faith for former US President Barrack Obama, now a research director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding claimed that the President of France was wrong to support a cartoon caricature that “pits freedom of speech against blasphemy”. She said that the cartoons clearly showed how the country is suffering from Islamophobia. She said, “They are the equivalent of the N-word. They are equivalent of blackface. They are racial slur.” The cartoons “target a vulnerable, marginalized, disempowered and demonized community by a powerful institution, which is then further demonized, sometimes by the state, for protesting those slurs.”  

Before the attacks took place, Emmanuel Macron had spoken about the new government plans to combat separatism. In his Republic in Action: Speech, he differentiates between Islam and Islamic terrorism. He said, “Let’s not fall into the trap of conflating issues, set by polemicists and extremists, which consists in denouncing all Muslims. That trap is what the enemies of the Republic set us; it consists of making all citizens of the Muslim faith objective allies because they are supposedly the victims of a well-organized system. Too simplistic.”

“What we must tackle is Islamist separatism. A conscious theorized, the political-religious project is materializing through repeated deviations from the Republic’s values, which is often reflected by the formation of a counter-society as shown by children being taken out of school, the development of separate community sporting and cultural activities serving as a pretext for teaching principles which aren’t following the Republic’s laws. It’s indoctrination and, through this, the negation of our principles, gender equality, and human dignity.”

Therefore, we see that the President’s notion of separatism assumes that a minority of Muslims are setting themselves apart from French society and creating their societies in the suburbs. The problem here is that the speech portrays Muslims as being immature, which is far from true. Many studies have shown that the Muslim community is well integrated. According to a study in 2019, 70% of  Muslims claimed that they were allowed to practice their religion freely. 41% said that they should adopt some of the principles of laïcité as French citizens and 37% said that they wished laïcité to be more flexible. The Muslims do not criticize the age-old republic version of the 1905 law about the separation of the State and Church. They attempt to criticize the recent interpretations of the law that seems to blame the Islamic community for terror events.

 In his research, Vincent Geisser found that many Muslims called upon the mosque to pray for the preservation of France. Many others also grieved for non-Muslims who were victims of Islamist terror attacks. It has been observed by the Centre of Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC-based think tank, which the US right-wing was responsible for 76% of the attacks but the Islamic extremists were blamed for them. Many argue that a vast majority of French Muslims are equally horrified by the terror attacks but feel the entire community cannot be stereotyped because of the actions of a few. However, many others in France now feel the urgent need to protect French secularism from what they see as a fundamentalist Islamist onslaught.  

The wedge between not only the Muslim community and the rest of the world but amongst every religious community is not new and has had a notorious effect on us. In Uttar Pradesh, renowned poet, Munawwar Rana was arrested by the police for spreading the already existing enmity between communities, when he said that he would kill whoever made an obscene cartoon of his father or mother, he would kill that person. He went on to say that he would feel like killing whoever made obscene and objectionable cartoons of Sita, Lord Ram, and other gods and goddesses. While anger revolving around the insult of one’s religion is understandable, the easy usage of the terms “killing” and actual murders for it is unacceptable and only shows how deeply religion is rooted in the minds of the people and the depths to which an individual, irrespective of his or her age, is willing to go.

Religion and actions based on religion have always been a hot topic of debate for women and men around the world and such terror attacks make one wonder how far this fight amongst the various communities will go.

The post RADICAL ISLAMIST TERROR ATTACKS IN FRANCE AND ANTI-FRANCE PROTESTS appeared first on WISER WORLD.

The G7 or ‘Group of Seven’ was authentically a ‘Group of Six’ initially in 1975, which included France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany but later in 1976, Canada became a part of the grouping resulting to the formation of G7. Eventually in 1998 Russia joined in the gathering and was called G8 but post-Crimea’s annexation, the democratic alliance excluded Moscow from the group. It is a grouping of the most industrialized countries all over the world and after UNSC(United Nations Security Council) is the second most important gathering for discussing global issues regarding security, economy, and energy.

As soon as the recent call was taken by POTUS, have created a dilemma that whether G7 is transforming itself by involving developing and middle-income countries together? Along with India POTUS has also invited Australia, South Korea, and astonishingly Russia again analyzing its strategic importance in the changing world order with an intention of keeping it far from Beijing. Considering the importance of India which has its global contributions in sectors like renewable energy, pharmaceutical medicines, steel manufacturing, etc. and its presence in the Indian Ocean has boosted up its strategic relevance in the region as well as over the world.

Is there something else that India holds more value that has brought it in the cynosure? Yes, it is the huge market that it holds and the intentions of the Indian government to invite massive foreign investments have brought a massive opportunity for foreign investors and manufacturing companies. The $3 trillion economy is the 3rd largest economy when calculated on (PPP) basis and the 5th largest economy when ranked by nominal GDP. The country is the fastest growing economy in the world. Ignoring India and other such growing economies have made POTUS rethink the current G7 structure which makes it outdated.

While Russia has accepted the invitation by the US president along with a condition of equal participation and yet has whispered the ignorance of China in the important group which is expanding, despite Beijing previously had been a part of G8+5. China being the second-largest economy and its growing ambitions over the world with respect to its BRI project makes the few, feel optimistic but it’s for sure that Washington is glaring at it with a threat over its hegemony. Re-arrangement of the 1976 grouping is being seen as a result of the expanding Chinese ambitions, its non-transparent behaviour amid a pandemic and it’s naval dominance in the maritime regions.

Though this new bloc being created should not set its agenda as Anti-Chinese but bring back Beijing under the global, institutional-based world order i.e to make China realize the value of discipline-based existence without exploiting the smaller nations to fulfil “CHINA DREAM” or “CPEC” passing from POK and recent activities of intrusion in Ladakh despite New Delhi being holding a claim over the disputed region. Beijing is ought to get over its old strategy of  “DEBT TRAPPING” against small and economically weaker nations.

The current pandemic has definitely brought a new opportunity for each and every country to get back on track and revitalize their circumstances being faced since the past. As regards USA which is moving ahead towards its presidential election in the month of November is uncertain about the re-election of Mr Trump, but no one can forget the unilateral decisions that POTUS has taken every moment keeping ahead the slogan “AMERICA FIRST” or promoting protectionism against globalization is quite similar to Xi administration policies depicting “CHINA FIRST“. The USA will have to rethink over its past decisions and should progress ahead with multilateral dialogues. US administration should consider its allies before taking universally bothered decisions instead of facilitating it unilaterally.

Experiencing from the past actions of the USA like moving out from “Climate Change Mitigation Agreement” or “Withdrawal from JCPOA” would make other countries to think twice before getting allied and these points should be given thought upon by the POTUS with a further expectation demanding global support against China’s unilateralism.

If the vision of new G10 or G11(Indonesia may be invited in the new formation of G7) becomes a reality then it would look like an altered version of G20 yet with great importance. The next summit would be a second time that India under the leadership of PM Modi would show its presence. Last year French President Emanuel Macron had invited PM Modi to the summit. Prior to this PM Manmohan Singh had represented India in five successive G8 summits. Primarily, seat at the ‘high table’ for India would be a great platform to keep its foreign policy and security concerned interests as well as for its backing to confirm a permanent seat in UNSC along with a global consensus for its inclusion in the nuclear club. India’s dominance in the Indian Ocean would also get a global agreement to promote free trade in the region.

The affirmed mouthpiece of Chinese government ‘Global Times’ have lately warned India to refrain from getting into a proposed invitation in the G7 summit claiming it to be a “small circle that perceives China as an imaginary enemy”. Unlike a ping pong ball, being hitten from both the sides, New Delhi should take a pragmatic decision before allying with any of the bodies or nations. It should keep its neighbouring policies under consideration, as we see the ongoing tussle between India and China near LAC may have an undesired repercussions post-pro-G7 resolution, though firm decisions are always welcomed keeping India’s interest ahead.

The post WIDENING G7: ARE DEMOCRACIES ALLYING TOGETHER? appeared first on WISER WORLD.