Tribune published in Marianne of July 26, 2024

David Lappartient, President of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), and Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, reacted to the case of French athlete Sounkamba Sylla, selected for the athletics team, banned from wearing her veil for the opening ceremony and the events. We are totally aligned between the State and the CNOSF ", assures the former head of world cycling." The French Olympic team is participating in a public service mission. It is bound by secularism. This may not be understandable in other countries, but it is part of our DNA, here in France. This secularism which allows us to respect the beliefs of each and every one, and which of course allows that outside of official representation, everyone is free to live as they wish in compliance with the laws. » Before adding: « We hope that all athletes will be able to participate in the opening ceremony. »

This is what will happen since she will finally be able to participate without a veil, but with a cap. It is in this context that the NGO Amnesty International, in a report published on July 16, due to France's refusal to authorize its French athletes to wear the hijab during the Olympic Games, accuses her of " racial discrimination based on gender "We must recognize in this approach a certain degree of ignorance or bad faith, curiously relayed by many media in France. What is at stake behind the deceptive appearances of this indictment?

This report explains that we are the only country in the world to impose this neutrality. We could be right on our own, but it turns out that this statement is false. Rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which concerns all participating countries, clearly states that " No kind of political, religious or racial demonstration or propaganda is permitted in any Olympic venue, site or other location ". This rule was deviated from, it is true, from 1996 when, at the Atlanta Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave in to the Islamic Republic of Iran by accepting a first veiled athlete. The rule nevertheless continues to exist and was even recently recalled in a guide published by the IOC. This neutrality is in the spirit of the Olympic truce, as the ancient Greeks saw it, the identity discords that cause disputes to the point of wars having to be erased to make way for the only motto that is worth it, that of the modern Olympic Games, " faster, higher, stronger – together ».

This discrimination trial of France by Amnesty International is due to the fact that the NGO gives precedence to the logic of difference over that of equality, unlike our Republic. We are the country which, due to the many popular revolutions of which it has been the scene (1789-1830-1848-1871, 1936…) has seen the “ law of numbers ", the people, become the source of political power, citizens equal beyond their particularities, bearers of the general interest. This is how France became the nation that it is. Let us recall that in the modern sense of the term, "the nation" signifies the freedom for the people to dispose of state power by establishing themselves as a sovereign political body, hence the notion of "nation-state".

The State has become secular, that is to say separated from religions, to guarantee this fundamental political principle, which does not exist anywhere else at this level. Equality is also the principle of the unitary State which results from it, which guarantees the existence of the same law for all, a great achievement of the French Revolution, and not each person's rights according to their difference.

It is the idea of ​​natural human rights, as stated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which means that, because of belonging to the human species, it is considered that everyone from birth should benefit from the same rights. It also guarantees freedom of convictions, including religious ones (art. 10), as long as this does not come into conflict with the freedom of others, because rights are also duties.

An equality that has asserted itself regardless of origin, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation… And there is nothing more contrary to this principle than the logic of community separation to which ostentatious religious symbols insinuate themselves everywhere lead. This is the characteristic of other democracies, organized in the mode of multiculturalism with its corollary, communitarianism, which alienates the individual to a logic of clientelist interests, privatizing his freedoms and rights. Let us not talk about those countries where religion is in the State, where freedoms are sometimes restricted to the point of oppression.

But also, it is this principle of equality that has pushed our republic in the direction of real equality to make it a social republic, with the conquest of social rights like there are nowhere else either, from Social Security to the Labor Code. It is this sense of the general interest that we find in French-style public services, also unique in the world, which are part of the principle of secularism, of which the sports federations in question are part. This was recalled by the Council of State in its decision concerning the hijab women whose request to wear the veil during football matches was rejected. In defending secularism, let us not forget that we are defending these social rights.

The Republic was the result of the break with an old unequal order justified by religion, it was born from this break between a law said and imposed in the name of the divine, to a law made by men for men, in the name of all. It is a source of pride, because our history is that of a society that has been able to move away from the supervision of religions, which does not take anything away from the freedom to believe or not, by protecting by secular laws the freedom of the citizen, which is found above all in the equality of rights, of human rights.

It is on these latter that there is still progress to be made in the cause, by building a body of values ​​and principles raised above particularisms, to guarantee each person their freedom. The question of the fight against discrimination must not import the acceptance of all differences in the name of the diversity of cultures, behind which many misfortunes occur, but a fight in the service of more equality and thus, of universalism, more unity, of protection, defining a humanism that can light the way towards a world of peace and happiness for all. This is the meaning of the Olympic Games which bring the world together around very beautiful values. France as a "secular and social Republic" is never anything but at the forefront of this movement.