This story began at the very end of last year. On the evening of December 29, activists of the charity organization Solidarite des Francais (SDF), which every Thursday feeds and clothes the poor, drove up to a church near the Montparnasse train station in Paris, where a crowd of vagrants was habitually waiting for them. One of the cars contained clothing, the other contained small portions of soup, various sweets, and Christmas souvenirs. Suddenly, instead of the homeless, the second car was surrounded by police. After checking the documents of the SDF activist Odile Bonnivar, the police commissioner forbade her from distributing soup “due to the discriminatory nature of this product” and “to avoid public disorder.” Later, on the official SDF website, an indignant letter from Odile Bonnivar appeared, who described what happened with a single but biting word: “shame”: “Shame on the chief of the Paris police, Pierre Mutz, who ordered the ban on soup distribution, calling it discriminatory. Shame on all the police officers in the Montparnasse area who carried out this order... in front of our friends living on the street, exhausted and sad.” As Ms. Bonnivar further writes, according to SDF data, the number of victims among vagrants who died this winter from hunger and cold on the streets of the French capital has already reached 11 people, and instead of helping the poor, the authorities are forbidding them from eating a plate of hot soup.
Initially, claims against SDF, whose activists once a week distributed to French vagrants soup cooked in pork broth, arose from the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples. Human rights activists accused the charity organization of having a far-right slant, deliberately feeding the poor pork and intentionally infringing on the rights of Jews and Muslims, who, for religious reasons, are forced to regularly refuse free soup. The movement even appealed to the French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, urging him to ban all charitable organizations operating in the country from bringing such “discriminatory” soup to the poor. In response, the leadership of the charity organization wrote a detailed document in which it stated that SDF has nothing to do with nationalists, and the soup in pork broth appeared on the menu for the homeless only because “pork is relatively inexpensive and at the same time has high energy value.” In addition, as stated in the document, the distribution of pork broth soup has never caused indignation or led to violations of public order. “Those in need quietly line up at the car and patiently wait for our staff to give them food... This procedure has never led to a fight, and the very fact of food distribution has never caused dissatisfaction among passersby.” Moreover, as they believe at Solidarite des Francais, if one has to choose between starving to death and religious beliefs, then it is wiser to sacrifice the latter but stay alive. “Some media claim that Muslims are forced to refuse our soup for religious reasons. However, journalists do not take into account the fact that any religion, including Islam, allows a person in extreme need, for example hungry and chilled, leniency in prohibitions.”
Despite such convincing explanations, the police authorities banned the distribution of soup, and this ban has been in effect since Thursday, January 26. True, difficulties immediately arose. First, the fact of distributing free food to the poor is not a violation of the law. Second, the vagrants themselves also gave a compelling argument, which is rather difficult for the authorities to refute: why is the distribution of pork soup perceived as a manifestation of racism, while the preparation of traditional food by Muslim organizations for their needy co-religionists raises no protest from anyone. Third, it is not entirely clear where Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has seen at least one Jewish homeless person in France who needs free soup. Be that as it may, Solidarite des Francais does not intend to give up without a fight and has already announced that every Thursday, as before, hot pork soup will await everyone at the same place, at the same time.
The Strasbourg Court of Human Rights categorically disapproved of the actions of the French human rights activists. And in Canada, like-minded people of Solidarite des Francais are issuing posters with the slogan “Hands off our pork soup.” They are confident that if decisive measures are not taken now, the next step of the French authorities will be a ban on the study of the fairy tale “The Three Little Pigs” in schools as a work that offends the ears of Muslim children.