Ok Tumblr, now that the US election is over, let me tell you about France and how fucked up the situation is here.
The video you see here is from a demonstration that happened on the 17th of november in Paris to protest against a law that’s been brought to parlement by the majority, that would prevent the recording and diffusion of images of the police.
Originally, the law project was written to “protect police forces from physical and psychological harm”, but it will be used to protect them from the law and from justice in a time of extraordinary increase of police brutality.
Policemen are already preventing journalist to take images of them as it is, even though it’s legal for now: they arrest them and issue bans on demonstration, they target them with rubber bullets and gas grenades (grenades that have been banned this year because they killed and amputated people but they are still used because the stocks have to be finished), they force them to erase their photos. Police forces can already arrest people for “outrage” and “rebellion”, and they use these vague terms to arrest political opponent, protestors and journalists.
For context, police forces began to have more and more impunity since the beginning of the yellow vests movement, but people have also been recording them more often. That led to many scandals for the past few years, like the Benalla case in july 2018, where one of Macron’s bodyguard was recorded dressed up as a policeman (which he wasn’t), beating up some protestors and passerby during a demonstration. The video led to the opening of many different cases about him linked to corruption in the government, but to this day he still hasn’t been judged and still is a free man. The journalist who recorded him is still getting death treats every week and has also been beaten up by police forces in 2019 and his phone, which he used to record his arrest and beating from the police, has been taken from him and he and the justice system couldn’t have acces to it for 8 months. (source here, in french sorry).
There have been many cases like the one of George Floyd, where police killed a man and journalists proved they lied about it in their reports (about the timeline, the victim’s behaviour, the care they gave to the victim etc…) and then the justice system still gave reason to the police: Adama Traoré, Cédric Chouviat, Liu Shaoyao, and actually there are so much it would take me days to tell you about all of them from the past 4 years.
The police is racist as fuck (young men perceived as black or arab are 20 times more likely to be stopped in the street), with more than 80% of them voting for extreme right parties at the 2017 presidential election, and even more worrisome it has extremelly influencial unions, and this law to prevent the diffusion of images from the police is actually made to please them when this whole government is on a thin edge because around 60% of the population disapprouve of their politics (like maybe cutting the founds to the health system and still closing beds in hospitals in the middle of a pandemic is not a good idea). Like right now the so called “centrist” LREM party is playing on the far-right to keep a bit of voters and police to their side, because everyone else could see how fucked up they are.
Oh btw, the body in charge of inspecting and controlling the police (they investigate on the cases of police brutality and give a judgment at the end, if the police was guilty or not), the IGPN, is run by…police officers. You can imagine how little of the inspections turn out to accuse the police.
Recently, Amnesty International issued a report on France (only in french here, sorry again) and expressed concern about the level of police brutalities, and journalists freedom, and so did the high commisionner for human rights at the United Nations and Reporters without borders.
Anyway I’m super worried for my country with the rise of the far-right, racisme, corruption and more and more power given to the police.
So yeah, Fuck Macron, Fuck the police, sorry for my bad spelling it’s 4am here.
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
