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FFrench President Emmanuel Macron has denied allegations that the government wants to restrict press freedom to protect the police. “This is a big lie,” Macron said Friday in a live interview with the online platform “Brut.” “We are not Hungary or Turkey.”
In an interview with the Internet platform for young people, Macron said that France had been “distorted” in the debate on a bill to protect police officers from filming. He accused critics of the bill of statements by “militants and anti-government.”
Journalists’ associations had accused the government of criminalizing representatives of the media with planned imprisonment and fines for filming or taking photographs of police operations. Reporters Without Borders spoke again of a “threat to press freedom” in France on Friday.
The majority of the government in parliament has now announced that it wants to review the controversial movie ban in the security law. However, it is not yet known exactly how the item will be changed. The National Assembly had already approved the existing draft at first reading.
Meanwhile, Macron wants to use an online tool to identify and eradicate discrimination by the police. On Friday, he described as “unbearable” that people of different skin color are more likely to be controlled by the police than whites. “We are going to put together a big poll on an Internet platform where people can say where they are being discriminated against and how,” he said.
Police misconduct attracted more attention in France after video footage of police officers beating a black man was released in November. Macron said the widespread use of body cameras on police officers will help expose misconduct.
Meanwhile, the French president had to endure more verbal attacks from his Turkish colleague Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a context of growing tensions between Ankara and Paris. Erdogan said he hoped the French “would get rid of their head of state as soon as possible.” Macron is a problem for France. And also: “With Macron, France is living a very dangerous time.”
Macron himself reacted cautiously to the new attacks. Believe in respect. Insults between political leaders are not a good method. Relations between Turkey and France have deteriorated more and more since last year. The triggers were, among other things, the dispute over gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean and the fighting over the Kauskasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where Turkey intervened militarily on the Azerbaijani side.
