Once again, incidents broke out in Paris in another protest against the controversial passage of the National Security Law and the restriction of social rights and freedoms in general. Protests in around a hundred cities across the country protested on Saturday, a day after President Emmanuel Macron refused to allow the violence to be systemic within the French police.

According to the Interior Ministry, 52,000 people took to the streets across the country, 5,000 of them in Paris. That was much less than a week ago, when, according to the Interior Ministry, more than 100,000 protested in 70 French cities – half a million, according to organizers, 46,000 in Paris. This time he was not looking for a confrontation with the police at the end of the parade, but at the beginning of the movement, which was provided by the police with great force.

In the northeastern part of the capital, on Gambetta Avenue, several shop windows were damaged, a supermarket, a real estate agency and a bank were robbed, cars were set on fire, preventing thousands of protesters from walking along the designated route to Plaza de the Republic. With the exclamation of “everyone hates the police”, “anti, anti, anti-capitalist”, the groups of the so-called black blocs also erected barricades and threw cobblestones at the policemen, who responded with tear gas. Police took out 30 people at 6 pm

“The disruptors are destroying the republic,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Twitter, assuring the police and gendarmes of his support, “that they were again attacked with great violence.” Anti-law protesters took to the streets again in almost all major French cities, but in several places, such as Bordeaux, Montpellier and Lyon, the prefecture also banned movements in city centers, fearing disorder. There were also clashes in western Nantes, where two policemen were injured in a Molotov cocktail in a 3,000-strong protest.
The nationwide measure was originally announced by trade unions as traditionally the first Saturday in December to protest against increasing insecurity. However, the march was joined by police organizations that criticized police violence and the amendment to the National Security Law for several weeks.
The latter had already brought masses to the streets last Saturday. In Paris, attempts were also made to disrupt the parade by anarchist protesters last Saturday, with 98 police officers injured in the clashes.

Following the series of protests last weekend, the majority of the French government indicated that it would rewrite and submit to another parliamentary debate an article of the national security bill that regulates the publication of photographs and recordings of members of the police in the course of your work.

According to the government, the move is aimed at protecting police officers from hate speech on social media, examples of which were particularly evident during the yellow vest demonstrations last year. Although the regulation states that only disclosure in bad faith is punishable, critics say the amendment restricts freedom of the media and information about possible police abuses.

An example of the latter was the high-profile recording ten days ago, in which a black-skinned music producer, Michel Zecler, was kicked and beaten by police at the entrance to his studio. The prosecution opened an investigation against him on Monday for suspicion of intentional violence by an official and falsification of police records based on the recording of the surveillance cameras of the study. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday dismissed allegations that government measures are reducing freedoms in France. “I will not let them claim that freedoms are diminishing in France,” the president said in a live interview on Friday on the Brut website, which is aimed primarily at young people. According to him, France is painted in a caricature of the current debate.

However, the head of state acknowledged the existence of police violence, which he clearly condemned. But he also condemned that police violence “has become a slogan for people with political intentions.” He stressed that violence against police officers, whose perpetrators were “completely savage people”, should also be condemned. Police unions on Saturday expressed outrage that Emmanuel Macron had indicated that the state would launch a website in January where anyone could report if they suffered any discrimination. In fact, according to the president, “the fact that someone’s skin is not white is much more substantiated, identified as a problematic factor, and this is unsustainable.” Police unions have asked their colleagues not to justify anyone in their protest from now on.



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