Gérald Darmanin will defend step by step on Wednesday before the deputies and then the senators his management of the demonstrations, under fire from critics in France and abroad who accuse him of excessive use of force.
The images of the violence that have punctuated the most recent demonstrations against the pension reform and, even more, those of the clashes between gendarmes and opponents of the water reservoirs on March 25 in Deux-Sèvres have revived the controversy over the maintenance of French order.
In Sainte-Soline, 47 gendarmes were injured, according to the authorities. Organizers reported 200 injured protesters, 40 of them seriously. One of them was still in a coma.
If he noted the presence of “ultraviolent groups”, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, judged in Le Monde the response of the police “largely disproportionate”. The Council of Europe was alarmed at the “excessive use of force”.
Associations, lawyers, magistrates and political figures on the left have denounced the same excessive use of force in the processions against the pension reform, in particular on the part of the BRAV-M (motorized police unit in Paris), as well as “preventive arrests ” and the use of intermediate weapons (LBD, disencirclement grenade…).
In an attempt to defuse criticism, the Minister of the Interior has multiplied in recent days in the media, with the same argument.
Police violence is not systemic and “never” did he “have a trembling hand for those who dishonor their uniform”, he declared to the JDD, stressing that “111” police officers and gendarmes had been sanctioned for “disproportionate use of force” in 2021.
He also highlighted the “violence” of certain demonstrators and pointed the finger at the far left and the rebellious France which “hates the police”.
“When violence, thugs and the ultra-left get involved, then it is the duty of the police to say stop,” he told the JDD. “I refuse to give in to the intellectual terrorism of the extreme left which consists in overturning values: the thugs would become the attacked and the police the aggressors”.
Last Tuesday, he initiated a procedure for the dissolution of the movement “The Uprisings of the earth” (SLT), co-organizer of the demonstration in Sainte-Soline, and announced on Sunday the creation of an “anti-ZAD” cell. “A declaration of war” from the minister, castigated SLT.
Sociologist Olivier Fillieule, a specialist in maintaining order, reports to AFP that at the start of the movement against pension reform, “the LBD like the de-encirclement grenades were used less”.
“Since then, it has hardened with (recourse to article) 49.3, but there has been no massive use of the LBD and grenades”, notes Mr. Fillieule. “If the response is disproportionate, we create more disorder than we reduce it”.
A senior national police officer argues to AFP that with “the more massive presence of radicals”, the police are intervening “more massively to lower the tension” in the demonstrations. “At the start of the movement, there was no reason to be as close as possible”.
As for the concept of “de-escalation” – which emerged a decade ago – Mr. Fillieule underlines that France has “always kept its distance”.
Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez said his troops are “de-escalating all the time”. “We intervene when there are abuses and we withdraw,” he said on BFMTV on Sunday.
Maintaining order has always been an extremely inflammable subject in France. No wonder according to the sociologist, for whom “France is the country in Europe where (it) is the most politicized, that is to say used by politicians for political purposes”.
The verbal battles between Gérald Darmanin and the head of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon are an illustration of this. The first accuses the second of being an “arsonist” and the second criticizes the first “a desire to dramatize to create (a) party of order”.
04/03/2023 16:54:38 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
