The French government has banned ‘big screen zones’ for football fans to watch World Cup 2018 matches due to the ongoing terror threat — casting further doubt over Western governments’ claims that they are not allowing radical Islam to “change our way of life”.
“I remind all publicly-elected officials of the fact that ‘big screen’ zones are completely forbidden in public spaces,” the interior ministry declared in a statement reported by the Metro.
“In the current climate of terrorist threats, the security procedures used at the last European Championship must be deployed again, with the same degree of efficiency.”
A football match between France and Germany at the Stade de France in Paris was targeted by three suicide bombers in November 2015, followed by a series of shootings and one suicide bombing in several cafés and restaurants, and capped by the Bataclan theatre massacre.
The German team ended up having to sleep at the stadium — with French players joining them in a show of solidarity — because it was deemed unsafe for them to attempt to return to their hotel while the attack was unfolding.
The terror threat does not appear to have declined, with the number of people on the Terrorist Prevention and Radicalisation Reporting File (FSPRT) rising by 60 per cent since 2015, and the list of terror attacks growing longer and longer.
The most severe was a lorry attack on the southern city of Nice in July 2016, in which some 434 people were mowed down by Tunisian migrant Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, before he was killed in an exchange of gunfire with regular police who drew their sidearms. 86 of the victims died.
The most recent were the Carcassone and Trèbes attack in March 2018, in which Moroccan migrant Redouane Lakdim murdered four people — including senior gendarmerie officer Arnaud Beltrame, who had volunteered himself as a hostage in exchange for a woman Lakdim had taken prisoner — and the May 12th knife attack in Paris, in which Chechen migrant Khamzat Azimov killed one and injured four.
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