I should be working on my finals but I canât. I need to talk about this because the world is looking at us through Notre-Dame, and I need to use this. You want to talk about France? LETâS TALK.
We have been on the brink of civil war since November.
You canât even begin to imagine what itâs like to live in France right now. Every Saturday, we protest for our rights, our civil, constitutional rights. Some may remember the student protests of last year (if not, here is a chronology of what happened: x, x, x, x). Since then, itâs gone downhill. In my university, the dean faces charges but is still in function, he hired a milicia with bulldogs who patrols the uni and separates any group of student they deem too big. They used to control our id before going in. The police violence is the worst thing Iâve ever seen in my life.
Iâm terrified to go outside, but I still go to protests because we are being silenced, slowly, methodically, by the Macron government. I was hurt multiple times during protests, almost always in the face. I was gassed, I was hit by water canons. The police isnât even caring about the non-protesters. Iâve seen them shoot gas grenades at toddlers, three-year-old choking on lacrymo. Two girls, gassed, and a little nine-year-old who had her arm broken running away.
A mother falling to the ground because a plastic-shrapnel grenade exploded next to her ankle and destroyed her foot. Most of my friends have PTSD, any sharp sound can send every single one of us into a panic attack. We canât handle fireworks or firecrackers anymore.
The blood. I canât make you understand how much blood is spilled during the protests. The number of times they scream MEDICÂ during protests makes me sick.
On record, there are currently three persons who were shot in the eye. One man had his hand ripped off. Multiple men and women got broken ribs from the flashballs. THEY EVEN SHOOT AT REPORTERS from the national television and freelancers, with water canons and flashballs. Theyâve beaten minors unconscious, theyâve shot a flashball into someoneâs mouth and it exploded his cheek, theyâve thrown a disabled man off his wheelchair.
During the protests, we break things. Of course we do. We break glass, mostly, because itâs the cheapest to repair and itâs whatâs the most impacting visually, so itâs our compromise. They break us.
If you carry a camera into a protest, theyâll track you down and target you until either your camera is dead or youâre too beaten up to be able to film. Iâve been there. I never bring my camera anymore. And even then, I wouldnât film anyway, because the police is on social media, and they look at every video, they identify peopleâs faces, and then people get in trouble. They block entire streets so you canât escape them. They make ânestsâ where they circle around protesters until theyâre surrounded, then they throw a gas grenade in the middle and when people run away towards the edges, they catch everyone one by one and beat them bloody.
And the worst is the misinformation. The media have done such a good job at misrepresenting the protests that there is infighting inside my own family, inside most families, at work, at school, between people who think the government is doing its best to control the situation and the protesters are violent anarchists set to destroy the country, and the people whoâve actually been in protests, whoâve peacefully raised their hands up when asked and where shot in the ribs with a flashball in thanks. My own parents didnât believe me until I came back from a protest with a split eyebrow and sprained wrist.
This is a short documentary a French newsreport/gamer youtuber made. If you speak French, it will give you another inside view. If not, you can just watch the images from March 18th, until now the most violent protest since November.
In Paris, now the army is in the street. They pulled back the anti-terrorism squads soldiers (about 7,000) and put them in the street, against us. They had orders to shoot after three warnings and they are armed to kill. THEY ARE ARMED WITH LETHAL WEAPONS. The last time the army was sent to control a protest was in 1948.
You want to talk about France? Talk about that. We are scared. We feel abandoned by the world. And guess what? If France falls, youâre all coming with us. Right now, itâs easy to forget that the same thing is happening in South-America and all over Middle-East, because Western media doesnât like talking about anything that isnât white and pretty. But if they managed to forget to talk about just how bad it is here, then itâs going to happen to you too. So the first step? Is to talk about it. Share this, share other news report. Talk about it with your friends, your families. Contact your local news, ask them why no one is talking about it. Go to social media, tweet people, ask questions. Hell, ask ME questions.
France is heading straight to civil war, and Iâm terrified.
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