Wednesday, January 18, 2006

French Judge slams small entrepreneur

In Compiègne a French judge convicted a butcher to pay 4.000 Euro in damages to a Senegalese Muslim, 1 Euro to SOS Racism and a 500 Euro fine. The Butcher was accused of having asked for a non-Muslim employee. The problems started when Lefèvre asked the job centre to clearly state that the employee should not have problems preparing pork. Butcher's son Silvain said: "The job centre immediately asked if we did not want an Arab or Black, but he only meant to clarify that because they had sent someone before who did not want to work with porc due to his Islamic faith. The butcher does not want to speak to the press.

Sylvain says that his father thought the job centre was taking too long with sending a candidate and had heard that an acquaintance wanted the job. At that moment the centre sent the Senegalese Ibrahima Gadio.

When Ibrahima went back to the job centre, they called Levebre who allegedly said that he did not want any Blacks or Muslims working for him. Lefèvre denies the allegations saying "it is their word against mine".

Both Sylvain and the laywer of Ibrahima, Bénédicte Meunier, think that the judge wanted to make an example of Lefèvre. The total costs for the butcher will amount to 15.000 Euros or Dollars. The Lefèvre family deny (!) voting Front National and allege that these verdicts cause more discrimination.

The laywer of Ibrahima says that the butcher lies and that the conversation was put on speakerphone at the job centre. The article in Dutch Parool does not make clear whether witnesses were heard in court. Those who can read French can read more about the case here. if there is a mention about witnesses I would like to know. My French is almost non-existent.

A classic example of the powerfull State ruthlessy interfering with a small entrepreneur who takes risks to make a living and creates prosperity and jobs. They are like the horse Boxer in "Animal Farm".

The report in the Dutch press is quite prominent and neutral, which is a good sign.

I remember going to a Amsterdam job centre once about 8 years ago and the employee who was working with me had send a CV of a Moroccan to a small businessman. The man had had problems with Moroccans before and was absolutely APOPLECTIC with rage. The woman kept insisting that she HAD to sent foreign candidates and could report him for discrimination and he got even angrier, shouting abuse at the woman at the top of his voice, daring her to report him. In the end she gave up.

2 comments:

Esther said...

This is what happens when you take PC to an extreme. At some point people lose their logical capacity, and can't diffrentiate between necessary qualities for a certain job and discrimminatory requirements.

MZ said...

Sigh.

The sickening thing that PC attacks the 'good' and defends the 'wrong' and the 'bad' should be so obvious to for everyone to see.

To me it's strange that politicians and especially judges do not seem to fathom the consequences of policy c.q. rulings like these.

If they want their ideals ever to become true they should see that this will not bring them closer at all.