Against police violence, for press freedom: protests in France

IIn France, tens of thousands of people took to the streets against police violence and for press freedom this Saturday. Protests in the capital, Paris, and in many other cities, were directed against a planned film ban during certain police operations. They were fueled by new cases of police violence that were 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, around 46,000 people took part in a protest march from Place de la République to Place de la Bastille in the center of the city. According to the organizers, there were even 500,000 people across the country. In Paris alone, 200,000 protesters took to the streets, said an alliance of journalists’ unions and human rights organizations that had called for the “March of Freedoms.”

In Paris, groups of protesters set up barricades on Saturday and threw stones and fireworks at police. Two cars, a motorcycle and construction materials caught fire. The police used stun grenades and tear gas. In Place de la Bastille, protesters set fire to a newsstand, the entrance to a building belonging to the French Central Bank and a neighboring brasserie. Several cars were also burning in the area. Paris police said 46 people were arrested. However, for the most part, the protests in the capital remained quiet.

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

The organizing alliance distanced itself from the violent participants in the protests and condemned the attacks on the police. It is unacceptable that “a handful of people” disturb the peaceful demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of protesters.

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

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

Last weekend, despite Corona’s exit restrictions, around 22,000 people in France took to the streets against the cinema ban. Since then, criticism of the planned law has become even more acute. The trigger was the recordings of two brutal police operations, which caused horror even at the top of the state.

President Macron was “shocked” on Friday by video recordings of police officers beating and racially abusing 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.