Against police violence, for freedom of the press: protests in France

IIn France, tens of thousands of people took to the streets this Saturday against police violence and for freedom of the press. Protests in the capital Paris and many other cities were directed against a planned ban on filming certain police operations. They were fueled by new cases of police violence that had been videotaped that week and caused horror across the country.

According to the French interior ministry, a total of 133,000 people demonstrated across the country on Saturday. In Paris alone, some 46,000 people took part in a protest march from the Republic Square to Bastille Square in the city center, according to the Interior Ministry. In the French capital, groups of demonstrators on Saturday built barricades and hit police with stones and fireworks. Two cars, a motorcycle and building materials caught fire. Police used stun grenades and tear gas. In Bastille Square, demonstrators set fire to a newspaper kiosk, the entrance to a French central bank building and a nearby brasserie. Several cars were also burning in the area. Paris police said 46 people were arrested. For the most part, however, protests in the capital have remained calm.

According to French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, a total of 37 police officers and gendarmes were injured in the protests in France, 23 of them in Paris. He condemned the violence via Twitter as “unacceptable”.

In the morning, up to 1,500 people took to the streets in Lille, in northern France, against the law. According to the organizers, up to 5,000 people took part in the protests in Rennes and Montpellier. There were isolated riots in Rennes and the police used tear gas. Other demonstrations were planned in Bordeaux, Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille and Grenoble, among others.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron wants to use the “global security” law to criminalize the distribution of photos or film recordings through which individual police officers could be targeted. Journalists’ associations fear huge restrictions on press freedom. With the planned law, the government also wants to allow police to monitor demonstrators with drones. The lower house of parliament has already approved the proposal at first reading.

Last weekend, despite restrictions on the release of Corona, some 22,000 people in France took to the streets against the ban on cinema. Since then, criticisms of the planned law have grown even more acute. The trigger was the recordings of two brutal police operations, which caused horror to the top of the state.

President Macron was “shocked” on Friday by video recordings of police officers who beat and racially insulted a black music producer in his Paris studio. He spoke of “unacceptable aggression” and called the images “shameful”. Previously, there had already been massive criticism of the police for the forced evacuation of a refugee camp in Paris.