European Justice

France, birthplace of human rights, has been convicted by the European Court in Strasbourg of having violated article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. According to the judges, five French policemen committed serious and cruel acts of violence against a drug-pusher of Moroccan and Dutch nationality while he was under detention. There can be no appeal against the sentence, and the French State must pay 500,000 French francs to the victim. Among the 41 member countries of the Council of Europe, only Turkey has been subjected to such a humiliating sentence.

The European Court of Human Rights, established in 1950 and amended last year to allow it to deal with the growing demands of a community which now includes eight hundred million people who can appeal directly to its judgement, has taken on a new lease of life. The Court’s authority has been progressively affirmed over the years so incisively as to force the member states to modify their legislation. Great Britain has been obliged to abandon corporal punishment in schools, Ireland to modernise its legislation on abortion and divorce, Belgium to modify the Constitution on the matter of linguistic rights. Italy has been condemned for the slowness of trials and Great Britain for the methods of repression used against the IRA.

Thus European justice, whose sentences have never been contested, has made itself respected as an international appeal court, to which individuals can resort directly against any violation of human rights. The influence of the Strasbourg judges and of the first international court ever established to protect human rights is destined to grow because it is part of a wider movement, which last year led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court and claims to uphold the principles of international justice (l.l.).