On January 30, 2019, already one year ago, the Council of Europe through its Commissioner for Human Rights expressed “very serious concerns” about the type of injuries wreaked on Gilets Jaunes protesters (the Yellow Vests) by French police forces. Later in February 2019, the European Parliament and the UN strongly condemned the disproportionate use of police violence in France.
One year later, by the 51st day of protest against the neo-liberal measures of Emmanuel Macron’s government, involving members of almost all professions (nurses, electricians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, university professors and researchers, dockers, sewer workers, gas workers, train drivers, subway drivers, radiologists, postmen, labour inspectors,and so forth), what is the outcome?
One year later the picture is frightening, a fortiori when it comes to a democracy.
Three deaths: an old lady targeted at her window by a grenade; a young man pushed into the Loire River and not saved from drowning by the police forces in attendance, who themselves have hidden the fact for weeks; and a man pinned to the ground, whose larynx was broken and died by suffocation during an identity check, when this method of arrest is prohibited in LA and NY and throughout Europe);
- thirty five people have been blinded by being shot with “flashbang grenades”;
- the hands of five protesters have been torn off by explosive grenades;
- 318 severe head injuries have been sustained by protesters;
- an estimated 6,000 persons in total have been injured.
Over the past two years, roughly every six months, the Ministry of Interior Affairs order around 40,000 grenades that can be fired at 472kph (category A2 war weapons), thousands of single-shot and semi-automatic flashball launchers (banned in all democratic countries, yet in France around 13,000 shots were fired in 2019 alone), tear gas launchers and more recently 25 million assault rifle bullets.
In Paris, armoured vehicles are being deployed, whilst hundreds of police motorcyclists, each with a driver and a passenger carrying a truncheon, are utilised to “accompany” demonstrators every week; with the sole purpose of assaulting people.
France is at war. No! Macron’s government is at war with its citizens.
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Emma Justum | Radio Free (2020-02-17T21:26:55+00:00) France – state violence: when does democracy cease to exist?. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/17/france-state-violence-when-does-democracy-cease-to-exist/
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