As far-right ideologies continue to gain ground across Europe, civic space is shrinking at an alarming rate. Civil society organisations engaged in the defence of human rights are increasingly becoming targets of smear campaigns, delegitimisation, and criminalisation. In this deeply hostile context, the CCIE is once again the target of a revived defamation campaign. This campaign is, once again, initially orchestrated by media outlets and political figures known for their racist rhetoric, with the aim of obstructing CSO efforts to combat Islamophobia.
Since the publication of our Facebook page, several French and Belgian media outlets have claimed that the CCIF, which voluntarily dissolved itself in France on 29 October and was then dissolved by the French Council of Ministers on 2 December 2020, had “reconstituted itself in Belgium.” This is false: the CCIF no longer exists. Its assets and what constitutes its intellectual property were transferred to other organisations, including CCIE, shortly after its voluntary dissolution.
Despite the many established facts of recent months, false claims about this organisation continue to circulate, in particular the idea that the CCIF was “clearly involved” in the murder of teacher Samuel Paty . French media outlets —such as Le Monde and Libération —which investigated whether the CCIF was involved, were able to determine that there was absolutely no action or communication by the organisation in relation to this case.
As such, claiming that the CCIF was involved in the attack (or even in the campaign against Samuel Paty) is highly defamatory and extremely serious. In fact, these accusations led to numerous death threats against members of the organisation’s teams, whose physical safety was jeopardized in France. On 27 October, in the daily newspaper LibérationMr Gérald Darmanin backtracked and acknowledged that the CCIF had no connection whatsoever with the campaign against Professor Samuel Paty1, while nonetheless reiterating his determination to dissolve the organisation.
The CCIF has always been a law-abiding civil society organisation. As none of its members had been convicted of any offence, the French government, through its Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, proceeded via an administrative route to dissolve it. This arbitrary dissolution, which the CCIF’s lawyer challenged before the Council of State, offended several major historic organisations, such as Amnesty International, which viewed it as an attack on freedom of association; the French Human Rights League (Ligue des Droits de l’Homme), which described it as a “political dissolution” ; and Human Rights Watch, which situated it within a broader “security drift” endangering civil liberties.
CCIE is a Belgian non-profit human rights organisation that existed prior to the dissolution of the CCIF and operates differently from the CCIF, notably by focusing on the monitoring and analysis of Islamophobia at the European level. Naturally, our choice fell on Brussels, the capital of Europe and a hub for meetings and exchanges among European non-governmental organisations.
Therefore, CCIE is not a reconstitution of the CCIF.
The CCIE team
- Moreover, the CCIF did not appear among the defendants in the Samuel Paty trial, which clearly demonstrates that this was indeed a defamatory campaign against an NGO that was seen as troublesome because it exposed Islamophobia —both interpersonal and institutional— through data and reports. ↩︎
