L'Arizona de l'Europe?

Immigrants and their advocates in the United States breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday as a federal district judge enjoined the harshest provisions of Arizona's draconian new immigration law from taking effect. That same day, across the pond, a human rights NGO spoke out against a "racialized vision of society in which a human group, though heterogeneous, is treated as criminogenic." L'Arizona? Non. La France? Oui.
In response to a riot last week (sparked by the police shooting a man dead) involving fifty travellers in central France, President Sarkozy announced Wednesday plans to dismantle 300 Roma and traveller camps across the country as part of his "war on crime and urban violence". In fine Arizona style, he also ordered the "almost immediate" expulsion of Roma from Bulgaria and Romania who have committed offenses against the public order and promised new legislation to make it easier to deport groups like the Roma for security reasons. (See too migration post below.)
The move has sparked concern on the part of human rights groups about promoting negative perceptions of the 400,000 travellers living in France, 95 percent of whom are said to be French nationals. Sarkozy's Interior Minister's responded by claiming that the measures "are not meant to stigmatize any community, regardless of who they are, but to punish illegal behavior". Evidemment.
And what did the European Commission have to say about all of this? Oui, bien sûr. Ben -- c'est-à-dire, peut être. Agence France Presse first reported that the European Commission had assented to Sarkozy's new policies, quoting the spokesperson for Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for justice, fundamental rights, and citizenship (pictured right) as saying, "European laws on the free movement of European citizens provide EU member states with the right to control their territory and combat crime." That provoked a response from Reding's spokesperson, who stated that AFP had misinterpreted the prior statement, and that the Commission was "neither for nor against" France's proposal to expel Bulgarian and Romanian Roma on security grounds. C'est clair?
The Romanian government, on the other hand, has minced few words in its assessment of France's approach (calling to mind Mexican President Felipe Calderon's response to the Arizona law). After the Minister of Justice declared Romania's readiness to cooperate with France, he noted that "cooperation does not mean using bulldozers to destroy camps and publicly blaming Roma." The Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed a similar willingness to cooperate, before suggesting that EU member states should be able to address criminal activity without resorting to ethnic stereotypes. He argued that "the solution to the Roma's socio-economic difficulties is social inclusion in the societies in which they live, whether in their country of origin or host state, in strict respect of human rights." Bucharest called for a European solution "to complement national efforts in areas such as education, professional training, health, and housing." On va voir.

(Hat tip to Diane Marie Amann for the Le Monde article; translations, and any errors therein, are mine.)

On July 12

On this day in ...
... 1952, Irina Bokova (right) was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She held a number of elected and diplomatic many positions in her home country, including Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador to France and Monaco, and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO. Then, on October 15, 2009, she was elected Director-General of UNESCO, the 1st woman, 1st Eastern European, and 10th person to hold that position.

(Prior July 12 posts are here, here, and here.)

On June 19

On this day in ...
... 1910 (100 years ago today), the 1st Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. Among those credited with its establishment (prior post) is a then-28-year-old woman, Sonora Smart Dodd (left), whose father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, had cared for her and her 5 younger brothers after their mother, Ellen Cheek Smart, died in 1898. The hearing in 1909 of a sermon about Mother's Day inspired Dodd's work toward the honoring of fathers as well. "In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. In 1972, President Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father's Day to be held on the 3rd Sunday of June each year." This year -- not only in the United States, but also in other countries, from Argentina to the United Kingdom -- Father's Day is tomorrow. (It's today in Bulgaria.)

(Prior June 19 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 25

On this day in ...
... 2005 (5 years ago today), the Treaty of Accession of Bulgaria and Romania was signed in Luxembourg, thus setting the stage for the joinder of those 2 countries to the European Union on January 1, 2007. With the addition of Bulgaria and Romania, the European Union comprised 27 member states, as it does to this day.

(Prior April 25 posts are here, here, and here)

On December 14

On this day in ...

... 1955, by Resolution 109, the U.N. Security Council admitted 16 new member states to the United Nations. Simultaneously admitted were Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon (today, Sri Lanka), Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. The vote was 8-0-3; abstaining were Belgium, China, and the United States.

(Prior December 14 posts are here and here.)

Landmark Domestic Violence Judgment by European Court of Human Rights

In a landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights has unanimously found that a state violated the human rights of the applicant and her mother in failing to protect them against domestic violence. In Opuz v Turkey, discussed in a previous post on IntLawGrrls, the applicant alleged that the state bore responsibility under the European Convention on Human Rights for its failure to take action against her violent husband who repeatedly attacked her and killed her mother.
The European Court had previously found state responsibility in a domestic violence case in Bevacqua and S. v. Bulgaria (2008), grounding its decision in article 8 (right to respect for family life) of the European Convention. In Opuz v Turkey, however, the Court found violations of:

• the right to life (art. 2) "in respect of the death of the applicant's mother"


• the prohibition of torture (art. 3) "in respect of the authorities' failure to protect the applicant against domestic violence perpetrated by her former husband"


• and -- significantly -- the right to non-discrimination on the basis of sex (art. 14). It explicitly recognized domestic violence as a form of gender discrimination that gives rise to state responsibility.

Regarding the latter, the Court found:

the existence of a prima facie indication that hte domestic violence affected mainly women and that the general and discriminatory judicial passivity in Turkey created a climate that was conducive to domestic violence ...
the criminal-law system, as operated in the instant case, did not have an adequate deterrent effect capable of ensuring the effective prevention of [domestic violence] ...
Bearing in mind its finding above that the general and discriminatory judicial passivity in Turkey, albeit unintentional, mainly affected women, the Court considers that the violence suffered by the applicant and her mother may be regarded as gender-based violence which is a form of discrimination against women. Despite the reforms carried out by the Government in recent years, the overall unresponsiveness of the judicial system and
impunity enjoyed by the aggressors, as found in the instant case, indicated that there was insufficient commitment to take appropriate action to address domestic violence.

Read the Court's decision here.
Watch the Court hearing in the case in October 2008 here.
A report issued in May 2009 on the Caselaw of the European Court of Human Rights on Violence against Women, prepared by Christine Chinkin, is available here.

On April 16

On this day in ...
... 1689 (320 years ago today), "the first professional woman writer in English," Aphra Behn (right), died and was buried in London's Westminster Abbey. She'd been born 39 years earlier outside of Canterbury, England. At some point in her 20s she married, but her husband soon died, and thereafter, in Antwerp, she served as a spy for King Charles II of Britain. She is believed to have visited Surinam, then a Dutch slaveholding colony -- a visit that provided source material for her 1688 novel Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave. A True History. A writer of fiction poetry, and plays, she's considered the author of the 1st epistolary novel, and a shaper of the female narrative voice. (credit for portrait of Behn by Mary Beale)
... 2003, at a ceremony in Athens, Greece, the 15 states then members of the European Union joined 10 states seeking to become members in signing the Treaty of Accession, which set out conditions for joinder. Today the EU has 27 member states; the 2 most recent additions, on January 1, 2007, were Bulgaria and Romania.

(Prior April 16 posts are here and here.)

On November 21, ...

... 2002 (5 years ago today), the 19 members states then comprising the North Atlantic Treaty Organization voted to invite 7 former Soviet Socialist Republics to join the collective security entity. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were slated for full admission to NATO in 2004.
... 1967 (40 years ago today), at a press conference, Gen. William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, assured the public regarding an intervention that had begun 2 years earlier:

I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.

"[M]ost Americans" thus "were stunned when the communists launched a massive offensive," during which they "actually penetrated the ground floor of the U.S. Embassy," during the Tet holiday the following January. The United States eventually withdrew in April 1975.

... 1964, U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) was born in Brooklyn, New York.