The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recently published its sixth monitoring report on Germany. Even though Germany has some of the most repressive hate speech laws in Europe, ECRI decided that, according to it, Germany is still not doing enough.

Never heard of ECRI? Here are a few words by way of introduction:

ECRI, which describes itself as “independent” is the human rights monitoring body of the Council of Europe — not to be confused with the European Union. The Council of Europe is composed of 47 member states, including all of the 27 European Union member states. Its decision and policy making body is the Committee of Ministers, made up of the foreign ministers of each of the member states. Its most famous body is the European Court of Human Rights. The Council of Europe, unlike the EU, cannot make binding rules on its member states. Last year it celebrated its 70th anniversary. The Council of Europe calls itself the “continent’s leading human rights organization… All 830 million people living in this common legal space have an ultimate right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights”.

ECRI was founded in 1994 by the heads of state of the 47 members of the Council of Europe. According to its 1997 Annual Report:

“The mandate of ECRI, as determined by the Heads of State and Government, is: to review member States’ legislation, policies and other measures to combat racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance, and their effectiveness; to propose further action at local, national and European level; to formulate general policy recommendations to member States…” (page 3)

“ECRI is composed of members designated by their governments (one for each member State of the Council of Europe) on the basis of their in-depth knowledge in the field of combating intolerance. They should have high moral authority and recognised expertise in dealing with racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance. ECRI’s members are nominated in their personal capacity and act as independent members.” (page 7)

Since 1994, ECRI has been monitoring Council of Europe member states to ensure that their policies and legislation adhere to the stated goals of the heads of state of the Council of Europe.

At the 1997 Strasbourg Summit, the member states of the Council of Europe,

“… reiterated their aim of achieving a greater unity between the member States in order to build a freer, more tolerant and just European society, and called for an intensification of the fight against racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance”.

Nearly three decades later, Europe has a large web of hate speech laws and policies, thanks in part to the efforts of ECRI — an unelected body — and the Council of Europe.

According to ECRI’s website:

“In the framework of its country monitoring work, ECRI examines the situation concerning manifestations of racism and intolerance in each of the Council of Europe member states. ECRI’s findings, along with recommendations as to how each country might deal with the problems identified, are published in country reports. These reports are drawn up after a contact visit to the country in question and a confidential dialogue with the national authorities. The country monitoring deals with all member States on an equal footing and takes place in five-year cycles, covering nine/ten countries per year”.

Work on the sixth round of the ECRI reports started at the end of 2018.[1] The sixth round country reports focus on three topics common to all member States: (1) Effective equality and access to rights, (2) Hate speech and hate-motivated violence, and (3) Integration and inclusion.

ECRI’s sixth report on Germany was published on March 17, 2020. In it, ECRI does not disguise what can hardly be described as anything other than a political agenda.

ECRI notes as a “welcome positive development” and a sign of “progress” that, among other things:

“Germany warmly welcomed an extraordinarily large number of asylum seekers in 2015. The Chancellor and ministers publicly spoke out against hate speech and called on social networks to enforce their guidelines on removing hate speech”.

Nevertheless, according to ECRI, “Despite the progress achieved, several issues give rise to concern”.

The article focuses on ECRI’s “concerns” regarding Germany’s measures against “hate speech”:

Although Germany’s hate-speech regulations are among the most repressive in the European Union, “ECRI regrets to note that German public discourse has become increasingly xenophobic in recent years, and that hate speech has become more common”.

“Against this background, ECRI highlights very positively that many Germans warmly welcomed, on the initiative of the Federal Chancellor, the extraordinarily large number of about 890 000 asylum seekers who arrived during the autumn of 2015. This ‘welcome-culture’ mobilised hundreds of thousands of individuals who contributed to accommodating and assisting the new arrivals, many of whom were refugees from Syria”.

ECRI laments that:

“Other parts of the population, however, showed concern about the wave of migration. Hostile and xenophobic attitudes increased and the public debate worsened. The political party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD)…took a strong position against migration… Issues such as the investigation of large numbers of complaints of sexual assault and theft after the New Year’s celebrations of 2015/2016 in Cologne and the suspicion that many asylum seekers were among the suspects, sparked a huge public debate, affected the general sense of security and contributed to increasing islamophobic and xenophobic sentiments and hate speech. Repeated public and media attention to other offenses allegedly committed by asylum seekers, the attack by an Islamist terrorist on the Berlin Christmas market on 19 December 2016 and other similar attacks in neighbouring countries further amplified fears, xenophobia and racism. The AfD gained 12.6% of the vote in the 2017 federal elections and, for example, 15.1% in the elections in Baden-Württemberg, 20.8% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 24.3% in Saxony-Anhalt”.

ECRI suggests that:

“… action is required in several areas to effectively prevent and combat hate speech. These encompass awareness-raising, prevention and counter speech, support to victims, self-regulation, the use of regulatory powers and, as a last resort, criminal investigation and punishment”.

ECRI considers that “there is a lack of a sufficiently robust and dense network of counselling services for victims [of hate speech]. Equality bodies should be given a clear mandate, the necessary competences and resources to assist victims of hate speech”.

ECRI notes with satisfaction, however, that:

In March 2017, the German Press Council changed… its Press Codex and published guidelines for its interpretation following a public debate on the media coverage of events that involved criminal offenses possibly committed by foreigners and in particular the assaults on women on New Year’s Eve 2015/2016. Guideline 12.1 of the Press Codex now states that the affiliation of suspects to ethnic, religious or other minorities should normally not be mentioned, unless there is a well-founded public interest”.

ECRI also “recalls that such information should only be disclosed by the police if it is strictly necessary and serves a legitimate purpose”.

ECRI then goes on to commend Germany for introducing the controversial 2017 censorship law, known as NetzDG, which requires Facebook to remove content within 24 hours or face fines of up to 50 million euros. ECRI legitimizes the law, saying that:

“the restrictions imposed by the NEA [Network Enforcement Act] can be considered as necessary in a democratic society… in particular to protect the reputation and the rights of privacy and honour of the persons exposed to hate speech… and to prevent disorder and crime”.

ECRI, nonetheless, evidently does not think that the censorship law goes far enough.

“ECRI also regrets that there is no mechanism in place that would ensure that social networks systematically transfer criminally relevant content and the related evidence to the police and prosecution. Thus, the general preventive effect of the prosecution and sentencing of hate speech cases cannot fully develop and further contribute to the elimination of online hate speech… ECRI recommends that the German authorities standardise access to, and rules for, reporting hate speech on social media, ensure that evidence of online hate speech is preserved and transmitted to the law enforcement authorities and develop ways for the police and prosecution to close new channels for the dissemination of hate speech online”.

Germany has in fact already followed at least some of ECRI’s recommendations:

In October, the government announced that it was working on introducing legislation that among other things, obliges online service providers such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter not only to delete hate speech within a certain time frame, but to report hate speech to German authorities, and also to forward the IP address of the social media user suspected of hate speech. The German government approved the bill in February and it is now awaiting the approval of the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, and the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament.

ECRI also pushes its agenda on the media, stating:

“ECRI is pleased to note that the new National Action Plan on Integration will have a chapter on media. ECRI encourages all stakeholders involved in its revision to develop measures that help curb the spread of hate speech and avoid messages that unintentionally trigger racism and xenophobia”.

Finally, ECRI “strongly welcomes the German government’s implementation of its recommendation [in ECRI’s fifth report on Germany] to introduce into the law an obligation to discontinue the public financing of political parties and other organisations that promote racism” and recommends that such a procedure against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party be examined.

Since 1994, ECRI has been dispensing its highly politicized recommendations to European governments in confidential government consultations removed from public scrutiny. Only the final reports are published.

As this kind of arguably undemocratic governance, where an unelected body of “experts” tells national governments how to govern on fundamental issues such as freedom of speech, has been ongoing for several decades now, one can only assume that either Europeans approve of these measures or are entirely ignorant of them.

[1] The country reports of the first round were completed at the end of 1998, those of the second round at the end of 2002, those of the third round at the end of 2007, those of the fourth round in the beginning of 2014, and those of the fifth round at the end of 2019. Work on the sixth round reports started at the end of 2018.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15806/germany-ecri-free-speech

According to a study by the New York Times, at least 3,800 seniors living in nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died of the coronavirus and another 21,000 have been infected. There were 43 deaths at a Seattle nursing home, Life Care Center, in the last month, and yesterday, the 45th resident died of the virus at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in suburban Richmond, Virginia.

What those two facilities have in common is that they are publicly funded. In fact, most of those 3,800 deaths chronicled by the New York Times were in homes where Medicaid was paying most residents’ bills.

Post-Gazette:

“A publicly funded nursing home is a virus’s dream,” said Dr. Jim Wright, Canterbury’s medical director. “It is the best place for a virus to be. People are close together. Their immune systems are compromised. It is just a tinderbox for that match.”

Studies have shown nursing homes heavily dependent on Medicaid for revenue have fewer nurses and other staff per patient than average and lower quality of care overall. And some of the biggest outbreaks so far have been at homes tied closely to the government payment program, including ones in Wayne, W.Va., and the Crown Heights section of New York City’s Brooklyn borough.

We’ve heard nightmare stories of conditions at some public nursing homes. Canterbury may one of the worst.

Even in normal times, Canterbury merited just one out of five stars in Medicare’s rating system, with inspection records showing the facility had such poor staffing levels that it impacted patient care.

One nurse told an inspector last year “residents would stay in bed because it is almost impossible for two people to assist 62 or 63 residents.” Previous inspections also found infection-control problems and failure to report an attempted rape of a patient.

One patient had a sore on her leg that went unnoticed for so long that by the time they began to treat it, her leg had to be amputated. That kind of care is not uncommon and is one of the big reasons the virus has taken such a heavy toll on nursing homes.

Governors are trying. They’ve even called out the National Guard to help.

Since then, several governors have used their emergency power to do the same for their homes. The National Guard was called in to evacuate a home in Tennessee, take over another one in Massachusetts and run tests at a third in Wisconsin. And special “strike teams” have been tapped to run tests and ferry supplies to homes in Ohio, Indiana and Maryland.

“Where is the state in some of this? Why wasn’t more done on a state level as well to come in and take over the situation?” Ms. Thompson asked, noting that at one point the victims from Canterbury accounted for about a third of the state’s dead. “There’s lots of blame to go around.”

The media is too busy trashing Trump to pay much attention to states run by Democratic governors.

It won’t matter to the anti-Trump hysterics, but the insidious nature of this bug means that it can infect hundreds of people before anyone knows it’s there. That’s what’s happened in nursing homes across the country and thousands are dying because of it.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/virus-is-taking-a-heavy-toll-at-nursing-homes-across-america/

A bloc of 104 predominantly left-wing French MPs have signed a letter addressed to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe calling for the government to offer amnesty to all illegal migrants living in France.

The signatories claim that the move would help to fight the coronavirus epidemic.

The letter was inspired by the Portugal where the Portuguese government decided to grant illegal migrants and asylum seekers residency rights on March 28 in order to provide them with healthcare access during the coronavirus outbreak.

Portugal did not specify how many illegal migrants benefit from the decision, but the measure is explicitly temporary and meant to only last for the duration of the virus outbreak.

On the other hand, French MPs did not specify whether the amnesty they are demanding should be temporary as well.

“We solemnly call on the French government to take the same measures as the Portuguese government. The health catastrophe we are experiencing forces us to act responsibly and without delay, as our Portuguese friends have done,” states the French letter published in Le Journal du Dimanche.

According to the MPs, amnesty would contribute to making the illegal migrants eligible for healthcare in case they get infected with the coronavirus. Other activist groups have also pushed for similar measures in other countries, including the 3 Febbraio NGO in Italy, which has called on the government there to grant a mass amnesty to approximately 700,000 illegal migrants during the coronavirus crisis. 

The push for mass amnesties comes at a time when Council of Europe Commissioner for Human RightsDunja Mijatovic has demanded the release for as many migrants as possible from detention centers across Europe amid coronavirus pandemic.

France’s migrant population is rapidly growing

Recently, France has been one of the prime destinations for illegal migrants and asylum seekers, and their number increases every year. Although the country keeps no official statistics on the ethnicity of newborns or its overall population, a study has shown that the country is undergoing demographic transformation, with one-in-five newborns given Arab-Muslim names. 

The country saw three record-breaking numbers of asylum claims in a row from 2017 to 2019.

It is estimated that in 2019, 138,000 people applied for asylum in France, while it was only 123,000 in the previous year.

In total, France’s illegal immigrant population is estimated in hundreds of thousands of people.

Providing amnesty to illegal migrants may also make France an even more appealing destination for migrants looking for a final destination in Europe.

There are also concerns that a rising population of migrants may lead to more crime. Nearly half of all criminals in Paris no-go zones feature a migrant background, according to Le Figaro.

rmx.news/article/article/104-french-politicians-call-for-mass-amnesty-for-illegal-migrants-during-coronavirus-crisis

Uwe Becker, the commissioner of the Hessian federal state government for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism in Germany, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that the director of the Ruhrtriennale music and cultural festival should be dismissed for providing a platform for Israel-related antisemitism.”Once again, the director of the Ruhrtriennale Stefanie Carp sets an anti-Israel accent and stages the defamation of the Jewish state in the guise of freedom of art and expression,” said Becker.

He added that ”Obviously Ms. Carp not only has a problem with Israel but also deliberately provides a large platform for Israel-related antisemitism. Once again, she is abusing the framework of a publicly funded festival for antisemitic enemy images toward Israel.”Becker, who is also president of the pro-Israel NGO, the German-Israel friendship society, said  “Ms. Carp should be discharged from her duties and Prof. Achille Mbembe should be disinvited from the event.”Becker’s statement is the first call for Carp’s dismissal in a widening anti-Israel scandal involving her no holds barred defense of Mbembe, who has been accused of antisemitism and trivializing the Holocaust.Mbembe signed a petition supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel.In 2018, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the festival is located, in a parliamentary resolution,  banned public funds for institutions that provide BDS activists a platform and labeled BDS antismeitic.. The Ruhrtriennale receives public money.

Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen, the cultural minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told the Post  that” I fully stand behind that state parliament resolution,” adding that the  decision by Stefanie Carp to invite Prof. Achille Mbembe as opening speaker for this year’s Ruhrtriennale “raises doubts” over whether she complies with the decision of the state parliament on the subject.As a result of Carp’s alleged break with the state parliament decision, Pfeiffer-Poensgen has scheduled a supervisory board meeting of the Ruhrtriennale.”The meeting is expected to take place during the course of the take place next week,”said the minister.Carp told the Post that “Achille Mbembe will deliver the festival speech for the Ruhrtriennale.” Carp claimed that Mbembe  “not deal with Israel and the Middle East conflict.”However, Mbembe wrote a forward for the 2015  anti-Israel book: “Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy.” The South African-based academic wrote in the book that “the time has come for global isolation” of the Jewish state. Critics have accused Carp of turning the music and cultural festival into a hot bed of pro-BDS sentiments. She invited the pro-BDS band “Young Fathers” to play in 2018. When asked about Becker’s criticism of Carp, Pfeiffer-Poensgen and Carp declined to answer.Post media queries to the Governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, were not returned.

https://www.jpost.com/BDS-THREAT/German-cultural-festival-director-urged-to-be-fired-for-BDS-antisemitism-624709

Austria allowed thousands of shops to reopen on Tuesday as it became one of the first countries in Europe to loosen a lockdown imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Reuters reports.

Austria acted early in its outbreak to close schools, bars, theaters, restaurants, non-essential shops and other gathering places roughly four weeks ago. It has told the public to stay home and work from there if possible.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/495790

While German pensioners have to collect bottles because of old-age poverty, a Mediterranean man walks bizarrely and laughingly up and down a supermarket in Freiburg, takes food from the shelves and licks it off, he reaches for drink bottles, opens them, drinks from them and puts them back on the shelf. The man in the video calls himself Abdulsalam, according to the ” Bild” newspaper he originates from Tunisia and is allegedly a comedian; on Facebook he is called “abs106Official”.

As Focus Online reports, the man is known to the police. A woman from Freiburg, who often goes shopping in the supermarket in question, told FOCUS Online: “The video was shown to the store manager, who then called the police. A criminal complaint was filed and he was banned from the premises. The man she considers dangerous. She knows people who live in the neighbourhood of the supermarket. There she was warned about the man.

The police are now investigating the video.

politikstube.com/polizei-ermittelt-angeblicher-tunesischer-komiker-leckt-waren-im-supermarkt-ab/

A gay couple walking hand-in-hand in Amsterdam were harassed, attacked, and spit on by a group of foreigners on Monday. Photos and video footage of the incident have surfaced on social media.

During the ordeal, the two victims contacted the police and recorded video from their mobile phones. Although the hoodlums fled the scene when police officers arrived, two of them came back later and spat on the couple, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports

“Faggots! Gays not normal! You are cancer homos,” one of the immigrants can be heard saying while he proudly films himself harassing the two men.

The migrant youth can also be heard repeatedly shouting that in Amsterdam gays are not normal. The same migrant, together with one of his pals, is reported to have spat on the couple

The Amsterdam police are now investigating the incident.

“We have also seen the images ourselves and take it very seriously,” said a spokeswoman for the police. “Normally it takes a while before you can report a so-called ‘complaint offense’. The declaration process has now been accelerated. This means that a declaration can already be made this afternoon.”

The virulent anti-gay sentiment that’s now widespread throughout Europe is something that has been imported into the continent by so-called ‘elites’. The problem is particularly bad in multicultural France.

Last spring, a 21-year-old Tunisian migrant was arrested after he attacked a homosexual man, stabbing him to death and disemboweling his friend outside of Paris.

In the same month, two teenagers were brought in front of a French court after they were accused of using the gay dating app Grindr to lure gay men to an area where they would then beat and rob them.

In another case that happened only just a few months prior, two radical Islamic extremists were arrested for planning to carry out terror attacks against homosexuals using the same dating app, Le Parisien reported.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/04/netherlands-foreigners-attack-and-spit-on-gay-couple-in-amsterdam-video/

Police in Germany and Belgium faced violent assaults from violent youths during an Easter weekend during a time that both countries are under coronavirus lockdowns, with authorities arresting 57 in Belgium and six in Germany.

The largest attack on police occurred on Saturday in Anderlecht, Belgium, and featured migrant youths destroying police vehicles and firing a gun in a riot that quickly spun out of control, according to RTBF.

The street battles began when a 19-year-old identified only as “Adil” died when he collided with a police van while trying to run through a checkpoint with his scooter.

News of his death quickly spread through social media and messaging apps, prompting youths to call for “protests” over his death. Young migrant congregated with various weapons, including bricks and stone slabs which they hurled at police vehicles.

Dramatic footage was captured of the riot and posted to social media.

Other video angles showed the intensity of the street fights, with police looking as if they were virtually powerless to stop the rampaging men.

An unidentified individual wearing a ski mask also reportedly fired a handgun three times in the air that was previously stolen from a police vehicle. Police have confirmed that a police firearm was stolen and say the incident is currently under investigation.

“There was a new spike in violence, a more limited one, around 10 p.m., with stones thrown at a police station, but this was rapidly repressed by police,” said the mayor of Anderlecht, Fabien Cumps, to RTL.

Police chief Patrick Evenepoel said that police initially didn’t confront the illegal gathering but only took action “when we saw that groups of young people were arming themselves with rocks taken from construction sites in the area.”

Belgium currently bans all gatherings of two or more people.

German police attacked with iron bars and stones on Good Friday

In Germany, a warm Easter weekend also saw violent attacks on the Frankfurt police forces, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine.

While attempting to enforce social distancing measures, police were assaulted by a group of men wielding stones and iron bars. On Friday, police initially stopped to investigate a large group of men gathered in violation of the country’s lockdown rules in one of Frankfurt’s districts.

As officers approached, one of the men threw a stone at the police. The group then ran away before police could apprehend them.

A second officer was then attacked elsewhere by approximately 20 people as police stepped out of their vehicle.

“Some of the men were armed with stones, roof tiles and iron bars and were threatening the officers,” the Frankfurt police statement added. The police were also attacked by a person who threw a five-kilogram metal plate.

Frankfurt police then deployed a helicopter to search for the perpetrators, and eventually found and arrested six suspects between the ages of 23 and 31 in an apartment. Police seized brass knuckles, samurai swords, and knives from the suspects after searching the apartment. 

The identities of the suspects have not been released.

rmx.news/article/article/video-police-attacked-in-belgium-and-france-over-easter-weekend-dozens-of-migrant-youths-arrested

Police have arrested four unaccompanied minor migrants in Bordeaux in connection with the burglaries or attempted burglaries of 28 pharmacies in the city and surrounding area.

Officers arrested the minor migrants over the weekend as they were caught in the act of trying to break into a pharmacy. Deputy prosecutor Olivier Etienne requested three of the four remain in custody until their trial.

The prosecutor added that while all four of the migrants claim to be minors, at least two of them are actually adults after the prosecution checked their backgrounds with the Gironde departmental security department’s “unaccompanied minors” (MNA) group, 20 Minutes reports.

The MNA group has previously dismantled an Algerian migrant network run by a family which used dozens of minor migrants to commit crimes including violent robberies.

The 28 burglaries and attempted burglaries, which have seen some pharmacies robbed more than once, have all been reported since the French government, led by President Emmanuel Macron, ordered the country into lockdown on March 17th to stop the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The lockdown, which was initially meant to last just 15 days, has since been extended by the government until May 11th, with President Macron announcing the extension in a televised address on Monday.

“The epidemic is starting to slow down. The results are there,” Macron said but admitted: “Our country was not sufficiently ready for this crisis. We will all draw all the consequences.”

French prisons, which continue to be overcrowded, have also seen at least 8,000 inmates released since the start of the lockdown in a bid to stop the spread of the virus within the prison system.

“The overcrowding rate, which was 119 per cent on March 1st with more than 72,400 inmates, was 107 per cent on April 7th with 64,439 inmates. We, therefore, have close to 8,000 fewer detainees,” French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said last week.

Over the weekend, Adeline Hazan, the Comptroller-General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL), called for the government to release another 7,000 inmates who are near the end of their sentences.

The prisons comptroller argued that the prison system simply was not prepared for a pandemic, saying: “Given this prison overcrowding that we have known for decades, it would have been obvious that we had to foresee what could happen in the event of an epidemic and unfortunately we realise that it was not done.”

Ms Hazan added that those with six months left in their sentences should be released. But she argued dangerous inmates, such as violent criminals and convicted terrorists, should not be part of the release programme.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/14/underage-migrants-arrested-28-pharmacies-robbed-french-city/