Gérald Darmanin announced that “36 judicial investigations” had been opened by the IGPN, “the police of the police”, and 2 by the IGGN (the equivalent for the gendarmes) since the start of the mobilization against the pension reform , in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche.
While accusations are multiplying against “police violence” during demonstrations against pension reform or water reservoirs such as in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), the Minister of the Interior assured that he had ” never had a trembling hand for those who dishonor their own uniform”. He recalled that in 2021, “111” police and gendarmes had been sanctioned, and “101” in 2020, for “disproportionate use of force”.
But he once again gave his support to the police by insisting on the violence of certain demonstrators. “At Sainte-Soline, as in certain wild demonstrations, it was not policing: it was guerrilla warfare”. Believing that the politicians had “lacked firmness in the face of the far left, out of intellectual complacency or cowardice”, Gérald Darmanin affirmed that “no more ZAD (zone to defend, editor’s note) will settle in our country. Neither in Sainte-Soline nor elsewhere”. And to announce the creation in Beauvau of an “anti-ZAD cell, with specialized lawyers”. She will see the light of day on September 1, according to her entourage.
In total, noted the minister, “since March 16, 1,093 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters have been injured”. There were “2,579 arson attacks and 316 attacks on public buildings”. “When violence, thugs and the ultra-left get involved, then it is the duty of the police to say stop”, according to the Minister of the Interior. “I refuse to give in to the intellectual terrorism of the extreme left which consists in subverting values: the thugs would become the attacked and the police the aggressors,” he said.
Asked about the petition calling for the dissolution of the BRAV-M (motorcycle police in Paris), which had collected more than 240,000 signatures on Saturday evening, the Beauvau tenant judged that it was “a politicized petition, relayed by France rebellious who hates the police”.
As for the concerns expressed by the UN special rapporteur and the Council of Europe on the way in which force is used in France, the minister replied: “I hear the critics, but I encourage their authors, rather than commenting on video excerpts from New York or Brussels, to come to the field”.
Asked about the ultra-left, he assured that the intelligence services had identified “in France 2,200 S files” belonging to this movement.
He denounced “a very worrying complacency of the political movements which have their entrances to the National Assembly”. “I’m sounding the alarm,” he added. According to him, the Nupes “takes the slope of this ultraleft of the 1970s”, “takes the Republican left hostage”.
After the launch of the procedure for the dissolution of the movement “Les Uprisings of the Earth”, one of the organizers of the demonstration of Sainte-Soline, Gérald Darmanin announced that he would do the same for Defco (Defense collective), a movement of Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) which “calls for an uprising”. The minister also insisted on the importance of his immigration bill, which for the moment is put on hold, for lack of a majority to vote for it.
