SHAFAQNA- The French government is not the champion of free speech that it likes to think it is, Amnesty International said on Saturday. “The French government’s rhetoric on free speech is not enough to conceal its own shameless hypocrisy,” said Amnesty in its report , adding that freedom of expression “means nothing unless it applies to everyone.”
The report said that French President Emmanuel Macron and his government of doubled down on a “smear campaign” against French Muslims over the murder of Samuel Paty, a French teacher who was brutally murdered in mid-October. “[They] launched their own attack on freedom of expression,” said the report, citing recent incidents such as the hours-long questioning by French police of four 10-year-old children on suspicion of “apology of terrorism”, according to AA.