French rail firm BAN black and African workers from station for arrival of Israeli President ‘because they might have been mistaken for Muslims’
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | April 15, 2013 17:24
Black and North African railway workers were banned when the President of Israel visited France ‘because they might be Muslim’, it emerged today.
This was despite Shimon Peres specifically arriving in the country to work towards a Middle East peace agreement between Arabs and Jews.
It is now the subject of an official complaint by the SUD-Rail transport union which says everything was done to ensure there were ‘no Muslim employees to welcome the Head of the State of Israel’.
Mr Peres and a delegation of other senior Israelis arrived on a morning train from Belgium, and were greeted by staff from SNCF, France’s national railway, and their baggage-handling subsidiary, ITIREMIA.
The SUD-Rail statement adds: ‘We insist that SNCF publicly condemns these practices’ as ‘unacceptable’.
SNCF initially blamed the discrimination on ‘security protocol’ advised by the French Interior Ministry and the Israeli Embassy in Paris, but this has been emphatically denied by both.
Instead, the order came from SNCF management, with a spokesman for the state-run company pledging ‘a full investigation’.
Francois Hollande, France’s Socialist President, has pledged to clamp down on discrimination against minorities, and particularly Muslims, but prejudice is still rife.
France has the largest Muslim population in western Europe, with up to six million living in the country, many in major cities like Paris.
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