PARIS
The French government unveiled Friday a €100 million ($108 million) plan to counter the increase of racist acts and hate speech in the country.
Accompanied by several ministers, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls presented the plan in the city of Creteil, a town in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, where Jewish and Muslim communities have coexisted since decades.
"Racism, anti-Semitism, hatred of Muslims and foreigners and homophobia are increasing in an unbearable way in our country," Valls said during the press conference. "Being racist is a crime, it is in our law...there will be no leniency."
The plan, which contains 40 measures pertaining to law, education and the Internet. They are to be implemented over the course of three years, from 2015 to 2017.
One of the important aspects of the plan aims to provide training to both teachers and students in order to recognize racist acts and learn how to deal with them and report them.
Moreover, charities and associations engaged in fighting racism will be offered more financial aid by the government.
To combat hate speech on the Internet, Valls announced the establishment of a "national commission" made up of police officers, which will be responsible for improving the reporting and monitoring of racist and anti-Semitic acts and comments on the Web.
France has become more racist and more intolerant towards minorities, including Muslims and Jews, according to a report published by the Council of Europe in February.
The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, said it was "urgent" for France to "better address sustained and systematic racist and hate speech and acts."
He warned that such speeches and acts were "not only persisting, but are rising despite legislative developments and measures to fight against intolerance and racism."
"The French Jews can no longer be afraid of being Jewish ... French Muslims should not be ashamed of being Muslims," Valls concluded.
On Thursday, Abdallah Zekri, head of the French National Observatory against Islamophobia, revealed that anti-Muslim acts had reached a record high in the first three months of 2015, since 2011, saying that such acts soared by 500 percent during that period compared to the same period in 2014.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) said that anti-Semitic acts increased by 100 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year.
