Roma – praag.org

Mayor of Paris, minister call for ban on French comedian Dieudonne

The mayor of Paris is also calling for comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, known for his anti-Jewish humour, to be banned from performing in public.

France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, voiced his displeasure first in wanting Dieudonne, as he is known, banned from the stage.

The well-known comedian, started out years ago with a Jewish partner in sketches that mocked racism.

But in 1997, he fell out with Elie Semoun over money owed to him.

He has now joined the political right and alienated some fans with anti-Jewish comments. Dieudonne maintains that most people find joking about blacks in order, but not humour about Jews.

His latest joke about gas chambers has irked Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who likened Dieudonne to a criminal who “defends crimes against humanity”.

“We must ban the performances” he said, echoing recent comments made by interior minister Valls. Valls himself has been accused of discrimination after he said in September that Roma did not want to integrate.

Dieudonne has already been fined a couple of times for defamation, insults, hate speech and racial discrimination, and over his salute, called the “quenelle”.

The “quenelle” has been used by several personalities since, including footballer Nicolas Anelka, who recently used it to celebrate a goal.

But the 47-year-old comedian says the Holocaust gets too much attention to the exclusion of other crimes.

Valls, meanwhile, has said he wants to ban performances by Dieudonne on his nationwide tour this month, after the comedian joked about Jewish radio presenter Patrick Cohen.

“When I hear Patrick Cohen speak, I tell myself, you know, the gas chambers… A shame,” joked Dieudonne.

Despite the criticism, the comedian has scores of die-hard fans who feel he is unjustly being hounded by the media and politicians.

Dieudonne’s official page has 466,000 likes.

He won fans by exposing a well-known Jewish author’s denials of ethnic focus as flimsy and insincere.

The French-born son of a Cameroonian father and a white mother, Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala shot to fame in the 1990s in a double-act with his childhood friend Semoun.

He stood for EU-wide elections in 2009 on an anti-Zionist platform, describing Holocaust commemorations as “memorial pornography”.

But his shows at a small theatre in Paris that he manages attract packed audiences.

At his show on Thursday, the comedian joked about “kippa city” and “the banking slave master” to general hilarity.

Deported Roma girl, family attacked in Kosovo

Unidentified assailants on Sunday attacked a Roma schoolgirl, whose deportation from France sparked controversy, along with her family in Kosovo where they have been living since their eviction, police said.

“The Dibrani (family) were walking in Mitrovica with their children when they were attacked by unknown” people, a police officer, who requested to remain anonymous, told AFP.

The mother of 15-year-old Leonarda, Xhemaili, was “beaten and is in hospital while the children, who are traumatised, are at a police station”, the officer said.

Meanwhile, another police officer told reporters that four people were detained over the incident which, according to first findings, may have been caused by some previous private affairs.

“The incident occurred between two families, the Dibranis and the Bislimis,” police captain Ahmet Gjosha said.

“It turned out that Mr Bislimi was Xhemaili Dibrani’s husband 25 years ago and we assume that this fact sparked the incident.”

The Beslimi family was repatriated from Switzerland four months ago, he said.

Police said they were taking the incident very seriously and a probe was launched.

Shortly after the incident a police officer had told AFP that “it shows that the Dibranis are not safe here”.

Leonarda’s father Resat Dibrani, 47, was at the hospital by his wife’s side.

On Saturday, French President Francois Hollande offered Leonarda the chance to go back to France, but without her family.

Hollande’s offer was immediately rejected by the girl while her father said that the family, deported on October 9, would not be divided and would return to France by any means.

Her parents and five brothers and sisters had lived in France for four years while their asylum bid was processed. It was eventually rejected in the summer.

Leonarda Dibrani’s eviction caused an outcry in France because she was detained during a school trip before being deported with her family, and students took to the streets demanding she return and Interior Minister Manuel Valls resign.

In an interview with AFP Thursday, Resat Dibrani said he was born in Kosovo and that his wife and five of his six children, including Leonarda, were born in Italy.

He said he had lied about his family’s Kosovo origins to have a better chance of obtaining asylum.

Earlier on Sunday, the father told AFP that his “children are afraid to go out”.

“I cannot adapt myself, I left 35 years ago. I do not recognise the town any more,” he said stressing that he had only 200 euros ($275) left to feed his family.

The father, who wants to return to France, said: “The problem is to get into (EU member) Croatia and afterwards the way is open.”

“I would have to get 20,000 euros” for people who would take us into Croatia, he added.

The results of a formal probe published in France on Saturday found that the deportation was lawful but that police could have used better judgement in the way they handled it.

They also found that Leonarda and her sister were taken in by French social services after having accused their father of violence — a claim they later retracted.

Last year, 36,822 immigrants, many of them Roma, were deported from France, a nearly 12 percent rise from 2011. – AFP

French interior minister faces outcry over Roma girl’s deportation

France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls has defended the treatment of a 15-year-old Roma girl who was detained by police during a school trip and deported to Kosovo, amid an outcry within the ruling party.

Valls on Wednesday defended the deportation of Leonarda Dibrani, her parents and five siblings aged between one and 17 as legal, but ordered officials to review the handling of the case.

Confronted with an angry backlash from the left of the ruling Socialist party, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault promised the family would be brought back to France if the girl’s rights were found to have been infringed.

“If there is a God we will be aboard the first plane back to France,” Leonarda told AFP in an interview in the Kosovan town of Mitrovica, where the family have been given temporary housing by the local authorities.

“I’m frightened, I don’t speak Albanian. My life is in France. I don’t want to go to school here because I don’t speak any of the local languages. I had freedom there. I do not want to stay here.”

Opposition lawmakers backed Valls and warned that a decision to reverse the deportation would send out a damaging message that illegal immigrants were welcome in France.

“The law has to be applied and in this case an expulsion order had twice been upheld by the judicial system,” said Christian Jacob, leader of the parliamentary group of the centre-right UMP.

The fresh row over France’s treatment of Roma migrants erupted Wednesday when an NGO that campaigns against the expulsion of school-age children highlighted the incident, which happened on October 9 in the eastern town of Levier.

Claude Bartolone, the speaker of the National Assembly, underlined the extent of the disquiet in the Socialist camp over the case.

“There is the law but there are also values on which the left must never compromise,” he said in a tweet.

Education Minister Vincent Peillon said: “School has to be a sanctuary, we have to retain our principles based on rights and humanity.”

The controversy follows an outcry last month over remarks by Valls in which he said most of the 20,000 Roma in France had no intention of integrating and should be sent back to their countries of origin.

Polls have suggested as many as three in four French voters support that stance and Valls, who was already France’s most popular politician, has enjoyed a surge in his standing as a result of comments regarded as racist by his critics.

Leonarda’s father, Reshat, 47, who was deported a day before the rest of the family, said the family had been victimised because of their ethnicity.

“There are bad refugees in France who get papers easily — we didn’t do anything bad. They did it to us because we are Roma. We would be treated differently if our skin was a different colour.”

Valls insisted that the deportation of Leonarda and the rest of her family had been carried out in line with established procedure following the rejection of their application for asylum.

“Everyone should keep a cool head. Do not for one single moment doubt that the rules, based on the law, are applied by my services with intelligence, discretion and humanity,” the minister said.

“We have to carry out these deportations,” he added. “It is of course a difficult subject but any immigration policy requires respect for the law, respect for individuals and great firmness. I am accountable for that to the French people.”

Speaking later upon his arrival at the French Caribbean island of Martinique, Valls stressed that he backed “a policy of integration”.

The exact circumstances in which the girl was taken off the school bus remained unclear but both the interior ministry’s version and the account of a teacher agree that her arrest did not take place in view of other pupils.

The teacher, who gave her account via the Network for Education without Borders (RESF), however, claimed that the other children were fully aware of what was happening and were deeply distressed by the incident.

Leonarda herself said: “All my friends and my teacher were crying, some of them asked me if I had killed someone or stolen something as the police were looking for me. When the police reached the bus they told me to get out and that I had to go back to Kosovo.”

President Francois Hollande did not make any public statement on the row, prompting opposition accusations the government was in chaos. – AFP