Acouple of weeks ago, according to a story broken last Friday in Le Monde, the French government did the unthinkable. ‘MA’, as he has been dubbed by the French press, is an Uzbek exile and alleged radical Islamist who has long been a thorn in France’s side. Allegedly linked to the Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir (which he denies), he had fled Uzbekistan after facing criminal proceedings in 2015, and was denied refugee status in Estonia. France, having found him to be someone ‘embedded in the jihadist movement’ with a desire to fight in Syria, followed suit and served him an expulsion order.
He turned to the European Court of Human Rights, which duly issued an order to halt his deportation, on the basis that he might face torture in Uzbekistan. But to no avail. The French government, having taken its own view of the matter and decided that as far as it was concerned Uzbekistan was safe, simply ignored the word from Strasbourg and discreetly put him on a plane to Istanbul and Tashkent, where he was reportedly arrested on arrival.
This is a big deal. Previously France had on occasion deported people in pretty clear breach of the convention before their lawyers had had the chance to get to Strasbourg. But, as Le Monde pointed out, this was the first time France actually defied an order of the court. The symbolism of this move is considerable.
First, this was no crisis decision taken in a hurry. In October, after an Islamist fanatic with a knife murdered a teacher in Arras and wounded several others, interior minister Gérald Darmanin, an immigration hardliner, had already made clear his exasperation with human rights impediments to deportation. Even if deportees might face ill-treatment once removed, he said, he saw security at home as more important. Provided the internal French administrative courts were happy with a person being expelled, he saw no reason to wait to see what Strasbourg had to say.
Secondly, these events show that ECHR scepticism, far from being some outré view limited to a few far-right British head-bangers, is more widespread than it looks. Continental Europeans may be less ready to express impatience with human rights obstacles to dealing with dangerous foreigners, but such feelings are undoubtedly there. Indeed, they may even be stronger across the Channel. If the British government had behaved in this way, the establishment here would have raised merry hell with accusations of proto-fascism, cries of ‘breach of international law’ (which France’s action technically was), and solemn references by senior lawyers and legal academics to existential threats to the rule of law. The French action raised complaints from a few specialist pressure-groups like the Association droits de l’Homme en Asie Centrale, but does not seem to have had any more drastic effect. It didn’t even look to be trending much on social media.
The trouble is that your natural sympathies have to lie with the interior minister. For one thing, the European Court of Human Rights has largely brought this unpleasantness on itself. If it had limited itself to a narrow interpretation of the rights in the convention and merely acted as a backstop to prevent truly deliberate and dreadful internal actions by European states it would still be respected. But as it is, democratic governments can hardly be blamed for insisting that their duties are towards those who elected them rather than a group of transnational jurists.
Secondly, turning to the actual case of MA, it’s all very well to extend the ECHR prohibition on torture to cover almost any national action that might conceivably lead to mistreatment abroad, including deportation (which is essentially what Strasbourg has done, and which explains its order here). But there is a respectable argument, understandable to anyone other than a human rights lawyer, that this should be conditional on good behaviour by the visitor. If someone seeks refuge in my house while escaping an angry mob I should help him. But if he then proceeds to break the rules of my house, he can hardly complain if I throw him out, even if his enemies are waiting for him. So too with countries. By all means give asylum to those prepared to accept our values, but foreigners can hardly complain if they trash those values and we then decide they are not welcome. Put bluntly, it’s hard to see why anyone in France should be expected to lift a finger to protect someone subject to the allegations faced by MA.
Is there any message here for our government in its efforts to curb undesirable migration? One suspects there are two. First, we should take comfort from the fact that there is more European sympathy than you might think for the idea that the ECHR should not be regarded as some shibboleth. Despite it being reported that our Attorney-General has advised that any law containing ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to circumvent the ECHR will be ‘unlawful,’ the risk of the odd breach may not be as big a deal as some suggest.
Secondly, the common refrain from establishment figures, that any stepping away from implicit obedience to human rights norms will irreparably diminish our reputation and make us a pariah state, gets more implausible by the minute. Is there anyone out there who thinks that France, by telling the human rights establishment to go fish and thereby getting rid of an undeserving and intransigent foreign national, is now an international pariah to be shunned by all and sundry? Hands up. And be honest.
Source: The Spectator