PARIS – The 16-year-old French woman shared very personal details about her life, including her attraction to women, on a livestream on Instagram. Just no black or Arab women, she said.
When in January 2020 her Instagram account received insults and death threats in response to her comments, some of which said it was an affront to Islam, teenage Mila dug in and quickly posted another video.
“I hate religion,” she said. “The Koran is a religion of hatred.” She also used profanity to describe Islam and the crudest of images to refer to God.
The subsequent onslaught of threats after the video went viral brought 13 people to justice for online harassment.
The case has put the spotlight on the heated French debate over freedom of expression and blasphemy, especially when it comes to Islam. It is also a landmark test of recent legislation expanding France’s definition of cyber-harassment in relation to attacks on the internet, where vitriol is abundant but less modulated debate.
“We set the rules for what is acceptable and what is not,” said Michaël Humbert, the presiding judge, at the hearing.
Some looked back into history to capture the brutality of what Mila was witnessing online. Mila’s attorney said she had been digitally stoned. The prosecutor spoke in the case of a “Lyncherei 2.0”.
More than a year after Mila – the New York Times withholds her last name for being the subject of harassment – posted her videos, her life remains in a turmoil. She lives under police protection and no longer goes to school in person.
The 13 accused, some of whom are teenagers themselves, are on trial in Paris, most of them charged with death threats. You face jail time. The verdict is expected on Wednesday.
Most defendants have regretted the tone of their online comments – but the case has taken on a life of its own.
It exposed the deep polarization in French society over freedom of expression following the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper that published the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the decapitation last year of a teacher who showed similar cartoons during a class Discussion about freedom of expression.
Some of the defendants said they had no intention of harassing or threatening Mila. They were just kidding, venting, or trying to attract followers, they said.
But many of the comments were extremely snappy. The process only affects messages sent in November after Mila posted another video describing her continued online harassment – and reiterating some of her own crude imagery that sparked a flurry of new digital attacks.
When the presiding judge read some of them out loud at the trial, they made them gasp.
One of an 18-year-old psychology student named N’Aissita said: “It would be a real pleasure for me to tear your body apart with my finest knife and let it rot in the forest.” Another of a 19-year-old aspiring customs officer named Adam said, “Someone is going to come to your home, someone is going to tie you up and torture you.”
(A court clerk refused to fully identify the defendants to the Times; it is customary in France, especially in cases involving juveniles, not to publish the names of defendants unless they are public figures. )
Mila has repeatedly said that she does not want to be co-opted by politicians of any ideology. But many conservatives have stood up for her cause, and she says she feels abandoned by feminist and LGBTQ advocacy groups, accusing them of being afraid to defend their right to criticize religions for fear of offending Muslims.
“I am being abandoned by a fragile and cowardly nation,” she said.
For Mila’s defenders, the virulence directed against them shows that France’s model of secularism and freedom of expression is under attack.
“We went crazy,” said President Emmanuel Macron in an interview last year when asked about Mila. In France any religion could be criticized, “and because of this criticism we must not tolerate violence”.
Mr Macron himself was at the center of the violent tug-of-war over French values and the treatment of its Muslim citizens. He has vowed to defeat Islamist “separatism” or the undermining of French values of secularism and freedom of expression. Several terrorist attacks in the past year have hardened the mood in French society towards extremists in their midst and aroused fear among some French Muslims that they would be unjustly stigmatized.
In a television interview several weeks after her first video, Mila said that she was targeting Islam as a religion, not those who practice it in peace, and she apologized for hurting these people with her comments.
That’s an important difference in France, which criminalizes some hate speech but doesn’t prohibit blasphemy. The law distinguishes between ridiculing a religion and vilifying its believers. On this basis, prosecutors quickly closed an investigation they had opened against Mila on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred.
Instead, based on the Cyber Harassment Act passed in 2018, the police opened an investigation into those who followed them online. The law allows prosecutors to seek convictions against molesters who knew they were contributing to a wider wave of abuse, even if they didn’t coordinate with each other and even if they only posted or sent a comment.
In a recent book, Mila went back on some of her regrets, saying that at the time of the television interview, she was desperate to calm the situation but should not apologize for the legal use of her freedom of speech.
The defendants were charged with online harassment, which resulted in a prison sentence of up to two years and a fine of € 30,000, or nearly $ 36,000. Those charged with death threats face up to three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Defense lawyers asked why these 13 were chosen when thousands of people attacked Mila online.
The prosecutor said he expected to hold others accountable as well.
“Social media is not a lawless wild west,” said prosecutor Grégory Weill, who heads a new office that deals with hate speech and online harassment across France.
Nevertheless, Mr. Weill requested only short suspended sentences for 12 of the defendants, all of whom were first-time offenders. (He recommended that the charges against the 13th be dropped.) The court could be more severe in all of the sentences it imposes.
For two long days last month, the case against the 13 unfolded in a crowded courtroom.
Mila’s mother said her daughter experienced an endless “tsunami” of news that caused nightmares, depression and trauma. Mila fought vigorously against critics, but also in tears.
“I feel like I have rows of knives in my back all the time,” she said.
She turned down suggestions to leave social media, where she still clashes with critics, but also posts typical teenage content, like videos of herself lip-syncing songs.
“I see it like a woman who was raped on the street and who is told not to go out again so that she doesn’t get raped again,” said Mila. She added that she doesn’t like all religions, not just Islam.
Richard Malka, Mila’s attorney, castigated the defendants as easily offended, but slow to realize the consequences of their actions.
“You made them all radioactive,” said Mr. Malka. “You condemned her to loneliness.”
Although some of the defendants claimed to be Muslim, some of them claimed to be atheists. Some said Mila’s comments pissed them off because they had Muslim friends or found their videos disrespectful, which made them stop thinking.
“I reacted in the heat of the moment,” said Axel, a 20-year-old from southwest France, in court. “I don’t pay attention to religion, but all religions should be equal and respected.”
One of the defendants, Corentin, a 23-year-old school observer, said he could not understand religious intolerance. In his Twitter post wishing Mila would die, Corentin said he was not a criminal offense because he was “knowledgeable and an unbeliever”.
And when Mila’s attorney argued that religions deserve no respect and that respecting religious beliefs “leads to horror,” disagreed with N’Aissita, the psychology student who wrote about Mila’s knife.
“If religious beliefs had been respected, we wouldn’t be here,” she replied.
