French Ouster of 101 Malians Leaves Human Rights Questions

An unusual and dramatic police action, the expulsion of 101 Malians from France in one swoop, has become a disquieting symbol to many French citizens of the highhandedness of government.

From time to time, a disturbing case like this enters the imagination of many French and refuses to go away. The case of the Malians, which took place more than five months ago, is the latest example.

At 6 p.m. last Oct. 14, police raided a tenement building in an immigrant suburb of Paris and arrested almost 100 Malians who could not furnish any proof that they were citizens or legal residents of France.

The Africans were stripped naked and searched in waiting buses, taken to police headquarters, brought before magistrates, held under police guard in a hotel for four nights, and finally put aboard a chartered airplane with other detained Malians. To get them on board the plane, the police handcuffed them, and they clamped irons on the ankles of 30 who put up the most resistance.

Money Left Behind

In all, the chartered plane carried 101 Malians under French guard to Bamako, the capital of their native Mali, in a legal procedure known as “conducting them to the frontier”--a euphemism that demands fewer safeguards than a formal expulsion or deportation. None of the deportees had been allowed to speak with a lawyer or a Malian consular official. Almost all arrived with nothing but the clothes on their back. None had been allowed to withdraw any money from their bank accounts.

This case of group expulsion shocked many Frenchmen. It did not, after all, take place in Nazi Germany or in the territory of some Third World despot but in the country that gave the world the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Many opponents of the conservative government of Premier Jacques Chirac saw the case as a terrible and symbolic reflection of unfeeling and arbitrary government power. During the student protests that shook the Chirac government last December, some marchers held up handwritten placards that said only “101 Malians.” Editorial writers and cartoonists, heaping scorn on Interior Minister Charles Pasqua for expelling the Malians, called the charter flight “Air Pasqua.”

The Chirac government, which came to power last March with a campaign pledge to stamp out illegal immigration, was embarrassed by the furor, but not enough to admit that it was wrong.

“You cannot criticize the expulsions,” a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said a few days ago. “It was made in accordance with all regulations, laws and human rights.”

Chirac showed no hesitation about lecturing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg for more than an hour in January on the subject of human rights. And he ended his speech with a ringing quote from the French novelist Albert Camus: “Freedom is in chains as long as a single human being remains enslaved.”

Government officials have acknowledged that from the point of view of public relations it was theatrical and foolish to expel so many immigrants of the same nationality at one time. But the officials said they would continue to expel illegal immigrants, though in smaller numbers and at different times.

The most detailed public investigation of the case has come from the International Federation of Human Rights, a respected, nonpartisan organization of lawyers who volunteer their time to look into possible violations of rights. The federation sent Yves Baudelot, a 44-year-old Paris lawyer, to Mali to try to find out exactly what had happened. His report was made public recently.

Baudelot’s task was not easy. Some of the Malians said they had stuck their French official papers in the pockets of their jeans and left them there when the jeans were washed. Most of them could not read or write.

“Trying to understand the wording of a French government judgment,” he said later, “was, for them, like trying to understand Chinese.”

Baudelot interviewed 22 of the expelled Malians and read the official files of 42 others who had been questioned by Malian police after their return to Bamako. He reached the conclusion that almost all had been illegal immigrants, but he found some glaring exceptions.

One Had Valid Permit

One, Sissoko Massokona, evidently had a valid residence permit that was not to expire until December of 1987.

In two other cases, Baudelot found, the Malians, although they had emigrated to France illegally, had evidently changed their status in such a way that the government had no right to “conduct them to the frontier.” One, Mody Doucoure, told Baudelot that he had lived with a Frenchwoman and was the father of a French child. A second, 35-year-old Makadou Sananambounou, told Baudelot that he had lived in France since the age of 6.

Under the law, the police cannot “conduct to the frontier” the father of a French child or an immigrant who has been an habitual resident of France since childhood.

Even in the case of the others, Baudelot concluded, French law had been violated, since none of the Malians had been allowed during their detention in France to seek the advice of a lawyer, a Malian consular official, or, in fact, any friend or relative. When they asked to see a lawyer, Baudelot said, they were told they did not have the right to do so.

Other Abuses Seen

Baudelot also concluded that the French police had violated the ban of the European Convention on Human Rights on “inhumane and degrading treatment” by forcing the Malians to undress and putting shackles on them.

The French lawyer also criticized the French government for refusing to let the expelled Malians gather their belongings together, collect their last paychecks from their employers, or close out their bank accounts.

Malian diplomats told Baudelot that they did not hear about the plight of the deportees until a few hours before the charter flight left Paris and said that by then they could do little. The Malian government protested to the French government but then let the matter drop. Heavily dependent on France for economic aid, Mali now regards the issue as closed.

The French government has never made any public comment on the report of the International Federation of Human Rights. But after weeks of insistent phone calls from Baudelot, Minister of Security Robert Pandraud, an associate of Interior Minister Pasqua, finally informed him that the Interior Ministry would look into the issues raised in the report.