Elisabeth Borne said on Wednesday that she no longer understood some of the positions taken by the League for Human Rights, whose public subsidies the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin wanted to “look at”. “I have a lot of respect for what the LDH has embodied. I no longer understand some of its positions,” the Prime Minister told the Senate. “This misunderstanding (…) has emerged in its ambiguities in the face of radical Islamism. And it has been reinforced for a few months,” she added.
The head of government also recalled that the LDH had recently “attacked a decree prohibiting the transport of weapons by destination to Sainte-Soline” in Deux-Sèvres, the site of clashes between demonstrators opposed to megabasins (water reservoirs) and law enforcement. Élisabeth Borne assured that there was “no question of lowering the subsidy of this or that” association in principle, wishing “like all members of the government, that the associations supporting human rights continue their action of lookout, moreover largely financed by the State and the communities”.
“It is not by excusing violence that we defend it”
“But dialogue with associations on their actions is also a responsibility, when it comes to public funding,” continued the Prime Minister. Gérald Darmanin, during hearings before Parliament last week, had declared that “the subsidy given by the State” to the LDH “deserves to be looked at within the framework of the actions which have been carried out”. It had caused an uproar on the left. The LDH, an association founded in 1898, has notably deployed citizen observers in recent weeks during demonstrations to, among other things, document the system of maintaining order.
“Demonstrating is a fundamental right, it is not by excusing violence that we defend it, on the contrary”, underlined Elisabeth Borne. “He must be able to practice in safety”. “So we will continue to act to protect this right to protect the demonstrators, to protect the French”, she argued, paying “tribute” to the police and gendarmes who ensure “republican order”. For her, the call for support for the LDH published on the front page of Humanitytranslates “essentially” the “attachment” of the signatories to its “collective history”.
The president of the League for Human Rights “revolted”
In the process, the president of the League of Human Rights Patrick Baudouin declared Wednesday “outraged” by the “amalgam” of Elisabeth Borne. Asked by AFP, the president of the LDH said he was “surprised at the distortion” of the position of the association founded in 1898. “The amalgam that Madame Borne makes bristles and revolts me. fight that I have led almost all my life”, reacted Patrick Baudouin, calling on the Prime Minister to “appease the debate and not make things worse”.
“I do not impugn her intentions but I find that she gives in to little sirens who make her slip into remarks that are not acceptable to us (…) I know she is a little music that runs on the side of some of our opponents located rather on the right, even on the far right”, underlined Patrick Baudouin. “I wrote to Élisabeth Borne to ask her for an appointment. I am ready for a public debate, to exhibit, to exchange, possibly in relation to the criticisms that are made of us”, he added.