HUNDREDS of people have taken to the streets in central Paris against continuing police brutality and racial profiling across France, despite a ‘shocking’ ban on the gathering.
Nearly two thousand people defied a ban to join a memorial rally in central Paris on Saturday for Adama Traore, a young man of African descent killed while in police custody in 2016.
Seven years after his death, his sister, Yassa, had planned to lead an annual commemorative protest march north of Paris in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise.
But police dispersed the crowd from Paris’s huge Place de la Republique, sending several hundred people towards the wide Boulevard Magenta, where they were then seen marching peacefully.
Meanwhile, protest rallies took place throughout the country to denounce police brutality and the killing of 17-year-old Nahel M, of Algerian origin, during a traffic stop near Paris late last month.
With tensions still running high following the unrest sparked by Nahel’s killing by the police, a court ruled the chance of public disturbance was too high to allow the protest march to proceed.
The Paris police department also said in a statement published on its website that it had banned the planned protest rally, citing a ‘context of tensions’.
Authorities also banned a rally in the northern city of Lille on Saturday.
A health worker, Felix Bouvarel who attended the Paris gathering, described the ban as ‘shocking’, saying that ‘freedom of assembly, in particular, is under threat’ in France.
Sandrine Rousseau, a lawmaker from the EELV Green party, also denounced the ban on the rally, saying: ‘Public liberties are are being eroded little by little.’
And Jean-Luc Melenchon, the outspoken head of the leftist France Unbowed party, criticised the administration of President Emmanuel Macron.
‘From prohibition to repression … the leader is taking France to a regime we have already seen. Danger. Danger,’ he said in a tweet, referring to the World War II regime of Vichy leader Philippe Petain who collaborated with the Nazis.
Last Friday, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on France to pass legislation defining and banning racial profiling and challenged the country’s ‘excessive use of force by law enforcement.’
However, the following day, Saturday, the French foreign ministry, rejected the accusation that the country’s legal system is racist, claiming that ‘any ethnic profiling by law enforcement is banned in France.
‘The struggle against excesses in racial profiling has intensified,’ the ministry further claimed, insisting that ‘any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by law enforcement in France is unfounded.’
The latest unrest across France has generated a major crisis for French President Emmanuel Macron, who had been hoping to press on with pledges he’s made for his second term after seeing off months of violent protests that erupted in January over his decision to raise the retirement age.
- In an unprecedented assault on civil liberties in France, lawmakers have agreed that the country’s police forces need to be allowed to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices.
The measure, approved by lawmakers, covers laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones.
The devices can be remotely activated to record sound and images of people allegedly suspected of terror offences, as well as delinquency and organised crime.
Rights activists have slammed the measure as ‘an authoritarian snoopers’ charter’. The digital rights group, La Quadrature du Net, has also slammed the provision saying it raises serious concerns over infringements of fundamental civil liberties and part of a ‘slide into heavy-handed security’.
In early June, the French Senate, the upper house, approved a controversial provision to a justice bill that allowed law enforcement to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and criminals using their devices
The message from the top has generally been one to support the police and to reinforce their powers.
And it should be borne in mind that the police have faced some significant challenges, especially in the previous decade where France was subjected to a series of terrorist attacks and there was a fear that the police didn’t have strong enough powers to contain them, so, some of those powers were reinforced.
Moreover, Senators approved a provision in the bill allowing law enforcement to track device location if the owner is suspected of having committed a crime.
The measures come amid the unprecedented protests throughout France over the killing of Nahel M in late June in a traffic check in a Paris suburb, which renewed old grievances regarding police brutality and racial profiling.
It is estimated that some 3,400 to 4,000 people have been arrested, which includes more than 1,200 minors. Most of those detained have no prior criminal convictions.
Meanwhile, there are concerns about restrictions on social media in France.
Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, has announced that, from August 25, Paris will introduce mandatory measures censoring the work of social networks in the country.
According to Barrot, President Macron had urged him to ‘put maximum pressure on social networks’.
Macron has also proposed the creation of a working group by the Senate to address measures to be taken in the event of mass protests and riots.
Earlier, Macron claimed that protesters were using Snapchat, Tik Tok, and, Telegram, to film violent events and to organise illegal gatherings, and that the social media platforms had played a significant role in the mass protests.
‘We have (seen) on several of them, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and several others, both the organisation of violent gatherings and a form of mimicking of violence, which among the youngest leads to a feeling of unreality, it sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing in the streets in the video games that have intoxicated them.
‘ And this, the law, including over the past few months, has set out changes to parent control that we want to be fully respected,’ he said.
But Macron has come under fire over this threat to block social media in times of public unrest.
He told about 300 local leaders that the country needs to reflect on social media use among the youngest, and the prohibitions that must be put in place.
His comments drew fury from many critics.
‘These incidents just keep on happening, but this time it was captured on video and that’s why people are fuming.’ one said.
‘Macron goes to his Elton John concert, and then he blames video games for the protests, Video games!
‘Maybe his police officers play too many video games and that’s why they pulled out their guns on a 17 year old without a driver’s license. And one of them said “I’m gonna put a bullet in your head”,’ said another, while a further comment pointed out …
‘Macron now wants to ban “sensitive content” on social media because it’s embarrassing for him.
‘But Iran dares to ban Twitter or Egypt cuts off the internet, then Macron and the West will spring into their usual chorus of “that’s censorship” and “that’s a dictatorship” – “No freedom of speech”!’
Meanwhile, the French government has also been accused of conducting attacks on migrants, racial profiling, and, religious intolerance.
This most recent incident, of Nahel’s killing, has tapped into the long-festering resentment of police brutality among many French minorities and rekindled a long and painful debate on racial profiling by the police.
