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French President Emmanuel Macron has rejected accusations that his government has taken an illiberal turn because it wants to introduce a measure to protect police officers and because it has increased control over Islamist groups in France, Reuters writes.
In an interview on Friday, the French president said:
The current situation is not satisfactory, but that does not make us illiberal. We are not Hungary or Turkey or anything like that. I cannot allow them to claim that we are depriving ourselves of freedoms.
On Saturday November 29, hundreds of thousands of French people took to the streets to protest freedom of the press and against police violence. The protests were triggered on the one hand by the leak of a recording of a black producer beaten by the French police would be fined up to 45,000 euros and sentenced to one year in prison the publication of recordings of members of the police in the course of their work.
The interview focused on the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty, after which Emmanuel Macron promised tough action against Islamism. After his statement, he began protesting against him in many Muslim countries, now saying that he felt that Western leaders and intellectuals had let him down after the incident:
France has been attacked for defending freedom of expression. We were very lonely.
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