Six men were found guilty Wednesday of planning an attack against a Roma camp near Paris in March after online rumours that the Roma were kidnapping children from the French capital’s poorer suburbs.
A court in Bobigny, a northeastern suburb of Paris, found the men guilty of “participating in a group formed with the goal of committing violence,” a provision in France’s criminal code that punishes people who prepare acts of violence, even if they do not carry them out.
Four of the men were sentenced to five to six months in prison. Two others received five-month suspended sentences.
The rumours that spread on social media platforms like Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter were followed by an outburst of violence against the Roma, despite assurances by the French authorities that no kidnappings or attempted kidnappings had been reported to the police.
Yael Scemama, a lawyer with the anti-racism organisation Licra, which represents the Roma, welcomed the convictions.
“The crime is a highly serious one — the allegations were serious,” Scemama said. “Those young men had planned to attack unidentified people just because they belonged to the Roma community.”
The six men were not present at the ruling. They had asked not to be represented by a lawyer.
Over several days in late March, dozens of young men with sticks and knives attacked a Roma camp and burned vans in Bobigny, while others clashed with groups of Roma who sought to defend themselves. In other suburbs, Roma men were beaten, threatened or intimidated with gunshots, according to Roma advocacy groups.
Benjamin Griveaux, a government spokesman at the time, called the violence “unacceptable” and said it showed “the absolute necessity of fighting against fake news.”
“Spreading such rumours in an extremely viral and organised way on social media results in violence, in the stigmatisation of a community,” Griveaux said at the time, calling the process of spreading the rumours “detestable.”
France’s Parliament began debating a law on online hate speech this week, as lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron’s party hope to “put an end to impunity on social networks.”
The term Roma covers a number of ethnically related groups who have lived in Europe for centuries, including people who identify as Gypsies.
The French use the term almost exclusively to refer to populations from Eastern Europe, mainly from Bulgaria and Romania, who have migrated to France in recent years. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 live in France, many in squalid camps on the fringes of cities, where they face persistent discrimination.
Their presence has led to tensions with inhabitants of France’s poorer urban suburbs, which are often home to people of immigrant descent who themselves face discrimination and economic hardship.
The six men who faced trial are French citizens of African descent aged 23 to 27, according to French news reports. They denied intending to attack the Roma camp in Bobigny and said they had gone to Bobigny from their nearby hometown, Chelles, only to see whether the online rumors were true.
They followed utility vans that they suspected of taking part in kidnappings, and were arrested after being chased by occupants of a Roma camp who had been warned of an attack.
Some of the men denied being motivated by racism, and said they had sought only to intimidate the Roma. But social media records presented at trial were much more explicit.
“The more people there are, the more chances we have of catching one,” one of the defendants said in a Snapchat video on the night of the attack, with the caption “It’s war,” according to the newspaper Le Parisien.
Three other young men were found guilty in April in connection with the same attacks on the Roma, on charges ranging from violent assault to resisting arrest. They were given sentences of six to 10 months in prison. A fourth man was acquitted.
Some rights organisations and lawyers representing the Roma have criticised the sentences as insufficient.
“These are very light sentences,” Henri Braun, a lawyer for the charity Voice of the Roma, said of Wednesday’s ruling. “Racism against Roma is one the most deeply rooted forms of racism in our country.”
Braun said his organisation had documented 38 attacks against Roma after the misinformation emerged in March.
The spread of rumours targeting social or ethnic groups on social media, often accompanied by photos or videos that lack context but are presented as proof of crimes or wrongdoing, has led to acts of violence in recent years, some deadly. In India last year, rumours about child kidnappers went viral on WhatsApp, prompting fearful mobs to kill two dozen innocent people.
Similar unsubstantiated rumours have led to attacks in Mexico and rural Indonesia, and social media campaigns have been implicated in mass aggressions against ethnic groups in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
