Europe's shameful silence
Europeans have sought to downplay ultra-rightwinger Le Pen's electoral upset as an aberration in French politics. But Europe correspondent GRACE SUNG sees a wider pattern in the rising xenophobia and EU's refusal to acknowledge its human rights abuses
BRUSSELS - French presidential challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen's racist and xenophobic diatribes have been attacked as anti-democratic and against basic European values.
But Europe, which often likes to preach to other countries about democracy and human rights, faces similar threats to its vaunted values elsewhere.
The European political world reacted with shock and horror to Mr Le Pen's progress into the decisive round of the presidential polls.
The consensus was that the rise of the far-right would be detrimental anywhere, but even more so in France, the cradle of democracy and a beacon of human rights.
But why was it so shocking? Mr Le Pen and his National Front party have been around for three decades, and a nuisance for more than just a few days.
His current success is an aberration, as many have called it, only in the sense that few extreme right-wing politicians, who usually cull their support from disenchanted voters through crude and populist rhetoric targeted at immigrants and anyone else that is different, make it so far nationally.
Otherwise, they populate the political systems at various levels of local government.
In Denmark, Norway, Austria and Italy, they are even partners in the national coalitions.
Do not Austria's far-right Freedom Party and Italy's former neo-fascist National Alliance and anti-immigrant Northern League also represent a threat to European values and dignity?
Just last week, the Council of Europe denounced the use of racist and xenophobic propaganda by Italian parties, particularly the Northern League.
Politics and policies had been influenced by rhetoric directed at immigrants, who are blamed for crime and unemployment, as well as presented as a threat to national identity.
The council warned of persistent problems of racism and xenophobia against immigrants whom, it said, were discriminated against in terms of access to public services and judicial sentences.
Even the police were accused of using violence on these people.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dismissed criticism of the League as 'something out of the past'.
The European Union (EU) has often slammed other countries, including many in Asia, for their human rights record, and has taken a high profile stand against the use of the death penalty and torture around the world.
But Italy is hardly the only country accused of violating the very values the Europeans try so hard to impose on others.
France, Spain and Britain are among other EU states which have been accused of abuses, from police torture to racial and sexual discrimination.
In Britain, according to a Council of Europe survey of prejudice across the continent, racism against asylum-seekers and refugees is 'particularly acute'.
Human rights groups last year denounced the 'undignified' conditions that refugees and asylum-seekers were subjected to at France's leading airport, Roissy Charles de Gaulle.
Amnesty International, whose reports are often used by EU states to reprimand others, accused Spanish police earlier this month of 'frequent and widespread' torture and mistreatment of foreigners and ethnic minorities.
Its report examined more than 320 cases of abuse, from 1995 to this year, including deaths and rapes while in custody, plus beatings and verbal abuse.
The European Parliament also criticised EU member states last year for failing to honour commitments enshrined in its own charter on fundamental rights.
It said there were 'far too many cases' of staff violence against prisoners in jails, citing cases of 'unnecessary brutality' and 'sexual abuse', even against minors and pregnant women.
It also listed discrimination based on gender, age and race.
EU states once tried to act against one of their own to protect their common values.
When Austria's far-right Freedom Party was included in the government in the year 2000, the EU imposed limited diplomatic sanctions on the country for eight months.
It was but a token gesture.
The punishment never went very far, ranging from a freeze on bilateral relations to the boycott of school trips and cultural exchanges.
The whole episode caused more embarrassment for the other EU governments than for Austria.
The sanctions were lifted after Vienna was found to meet normal EU standards on human rights.
This, despite the fact that a Council of Europe report leaked a week before sanctions were lifted, expressed alarm at the level of racism and xenophobia in Austrian politics.
That ineffective slap on the wrist on fellow member states is not likely to recur.
European Commission president Romano Prodi said that EU states simply could not punish one of their own without endangering the workings of the union.
Including a radical party in government was 'very irritating', he said but if it happened again, the EU would have to live with it.
Ironically, France was one of the countries which were against ending the quarantine, but was out-voted.
It did not even manage to get a permanent monitoring mechanism to ensure that Austria would stay on the right course.
French President Jacques Chirac said at the time: 'Make no mistake, Europe made the point that had to be made.'
What happened is without precedent because Europe 'said clearly that it will not accept certain deviations from which it suffered so much in the past, and will remain vigilant'.
A few months later, Mr Joerg Haider, the former leader of the Freedom Party, proposed banning non-European refugees from seeking asylum in Austria, something that would be against both national and international law.
The party said his view was consistent with its own.
Mr Beat Schuller, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Austria, said that the plan put into question 'the whole catalogue of human rights'.
The EU's response? Silence.
Clearly, European countries have their own problems with demagogues and political extremists who put at risk their attachment to human rights and democracy, and who undermine their arguments when they try to lecture Asia and other countries.
Until it gets its own house in order, Europe should stop adopting the moral high ground on human rights and democracy.
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