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| France rail station where blacks were abnned |
(Scroll down for video) France has banned blacks from working at a certain railway during a recent visit by Israeli president Peres for fears that some might be Muslim, according to press reports in the United Kingdom.
The alleged discrimination occurred as Shimon Peres arrived at the station, the center for high-speed trains, to discuss the peace process in the Middle East.
Today, the incident was the subject of an official complaint by the SUD-Rail transport union, which said that everything was done to ensure that "no Muslim employees will welcome the Head of State of Israel."
Peres and a delegation of other high-level Israelis arrived by a morning train from Belgium, and were greeted by staff of the national railway of France, and its subsidiary.
The day before, however, a site administrator said all black workers at the station were banned, and those of North African descent, as they might be Muslim.
Secular France does not officially recognize anyone's religion, but management has assumed that any person of black or Arab descent may be a Muslim, according to SUD-Rail.
The SUD-Rail statement asked France to publicly condemn the incident as "unacceptable".
The railway initially blamed the discrimination in the "security protocol", on the French Interior Ministry and the Embassy of Israel in Paris, but this has been strongly denied by both.
Instead, the order came from the management of the station.
“This action is unacceptable in France. You can’t just go and ban all people from Africa just because they might be Muslim who might want to hurt the Israeli president. That what background checks are all about. The railway chose to do it the easy way which is racist and offensive,” Carl Lozano, 28, of Paris France told YourJewishNews.com after hearing about the allegations.
France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, with up to six million inhabitants.Mobile video not loading? Click here to view