Human Rights League (France)

The Human Rights League (French: Ligue des droits de l’homme [et du citoyen] or LDH) of France, is a Human Rights NGO association to observe, defend and promulgation of Rights Man within the French Republic in all spheres of public life. The LDH is a member of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH).

The League was founded on 4 June 1898 by the republican Ludovic Trarieux to defend captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew wrongly convicted for treason - this would be known as the Dreyfus Affair.

Dissolved by the anticommunist regime of Vichy during World War II, it was clandestinely reconstituted in 1943 by a central committee including Pierre Cot, René Cassin and Félix Gouin. The LDH was refounded after the Liberation. Paul Langevin, who had recently joined the French Communist Party (PCF), became its president. Opposed to the Algerian War and the massive use of torture by the French Army, the LDH called for demonstrations against the 1961 Alger putsch.

The LDH has opposed itself to the 23 February 2005 law on the "positive role of colonisation", which has been accused of being part of a revisionist discourse. President Jacques Chirac finally had the law, which had been voted by his UMP majority, repealed start of 2006. The LDH also took position in favor of the recognition of foreigners' right to vote in local elections end of December 2005. Besides, it took part in prisonners' movement organized since 1970 by the GIP (Groupe d'information sur les prisons, Group of Information on Prisons), founded by Michel Foucault and Daniel Deferre. The LDH also supports Italian former activist Cesare Battisti and American Ira Einhorn. The LDH has also opposed itself to Nicolas Sarkozy's policies, which it deems "repressive". In its 2003 report, it declared that "since the Algerian War we had never seen such a strong rollback of human rights in France".

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