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Two days after its launch, a petition opposing the government’s decision to shut down the anti-immigration group Génération Identitaire, collected more than 24,000 signatures.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on Saturday that the procedure for dissolving the far-right group known as Génération Identitaire had started and that its lawyers had ten days to appeal.
The group called on supporters to surrender on Saturday to protest the proposed closure.
In a document outlining its case, the Home Office said the group was responsible for inciting discrimination and hatred or violence against “a person or group of people because of their origin”. He said the group behaved like a private militia.
Génération Identitaire claims 2,800 members.
‘A private militia’
It first came to public attention in 2012 in Poitiers, when members staged a sit-in on the roof of a mosque under construction, chanting slogans hostile to Muslims.
5 members of the Group were sentenced for their role in the occupation, although their sentences were overturned in June 2020.
Other high profile stunts include the occupation in 2019 of a social assistance office in Bobigny in a heavily immigrated Parisian suburb. The group held a banner that read “money for the French, not for foreigners”. 19 people involved were sentenced to three months in prison.
In the government’s argument for the dissolution, Pascale Léglise, deputy director of public freedom and legal affairs at the ministry, said the movement hid a “xenophobic ideology behind a discourse of national preference”.
Capacity for harmful influence
She also ruled that the movement presents “immigration and Islam as threats that the French must fight”.
The ministry also cited violent actions against foreigners, notably noting incidents with Turkish supporters during a football match in France during the Euro 2016 tournament.
The government document also mentioned Generation Identity stickers and t-shirts found in a cache of improvised weapons and explosives during an investigation by the anti-terrorism police. The government said the stickers demonstrated the organization’s “ability to have harmful influence.”
More recently, in January, the group organized an operation to prevent migrants from entering Luchon in southwestern France from Spain. The government said the activity demonstrated the group’s willingness to operate as a private militia.
Mixed reaction from politicians
The president of Génération Identitaire, Clément Gandelin, thinks that the reason for the dissolution is more political. “You can feel that they are panicking,” he said, suggesting that the government wanted to make it clear that it was not just banning Islamist groups.
In the months following the beheading of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist terrorist, the interior ministry banned several organizations linked to Islamism.
Politicians were quick to react to the launch of the dissolution process.
Bruno Retailleau, of the right-wing majority party Les Républicains, argued that the government should act differently to treat groups like Generation Identity. The government should “end immigration” if it is to fight such movements, he said.
Meanwhile, Mathilde Panot of the far left group France Unbowed (La France Insoumise), tweeted “Finally!
Me Gilles-William Goldnadel, defending Génération Identitaire, clearly indicated that the group existed because the authorities were not dealing with illegal immigration.
“The Interior Ministry is reduced to considering that the radical criticism of illegal immigration is racist and xenophobic and that the despair in the face of the incapacity of the government [to combat illegal immigration] is too.
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