French Township Condemned for Deciding to Accept Only Christian Refugees

The administrative court in Grenoble cannulled a deliberation by the commune of Charvieu-Chavagneux (Isère) aiming to accept Christian refugees exclusively from the Middle East.
[Editor's Note: A "commune" in France is loosely equivalent to a civil township, with a larger town - in this case, Grenoble - overseeing its larger region and the communes therein.]

In a decision dated March 16, 2017, the court handed the following ruling:
 

[The commune] has no basis for maintaining that Christian refugees in France would find themselves in a situation different from that of other refugees...and that the different treatment of the refugees resulting from the contested deliberation would be justified by the general interest.

The city had pleaded that the Eastern Christians were the most persecuted in the countries of the Middle East, alluding to several Islamist attacks perpetrated in France over the past few years:
 

[they] do not endanger the security of others; they do not attack trains armed with Kalashnikovs [Russian assault rifles]; they do not slaughter journalists who are meeting in their offices, and they do not set out to decapitate their boss, as we saw a few kilometers from our commune.

This decision on the substance of the case comes after a temporary stay that was issued in November 2015, following an appeal by the prefecture of Isère, which denounced a violation of “the principle of laicity [secularity] and equality” in the deliberation that received a unanimous vote in September 2015 by the municipal counsel of that commune with a population of 8,600.

The town hall, moreover, will have to pay 600 Euros ($640) to the association Agir pour L’Égalité [Act for Equality] for legal expenses.

(Source: francetvinfo/lacroix – DICI no. 352 dated March 31, 2017)