French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin at the National Assembly in Paris on November 17, 2020 (AFP / Bertrand GUAY)
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The examination of a string of security measures, including the controversial framework for the dissemination of the image of police and gendarmes, began Tuesday evening in the National Assembly against a backdrop of protests in the hemicyle as in the street.
The deputies began to tackle the proposed law “comprehensive security” carried by LREM and its ally Agir, and its 1,300 amendments around 9 pm while serious clashes broke out between several hundred people and the forces of the order at the end of a rally near the Palais Bourbon despite the confinement.
Other gatherings bringing together a total of several thousand demonstrators took place in Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Marseille and even Rennes.
In the sights of the demonstrators: a law deemed “liberticidal” but intended “to protect those who protect us”, the police, according to the Minister of the Interior Gérard Darmanin.
“Let us read the text without fantasies”, he asked Tuesday evening, in a hemicyle where had taken place many deputies of all stripes.
“Freedom is receding in our country”, replied the leader of LFI deputies Jean-Luc Mélenchon, defending a motion of preliminary rejection which received 41 votes for and 281 against.
Two years to the day after the start of the movement of “yellow vests”, Mr. Mélenchon delivered an indictment of the security guidelines of the executive, causing turmoil and arrests on the benches of the majority and the right.
LR MP Eric Ciotti accused the LFI leader of fueling “hatred of far-left nerves” and softly hailed a text that contained “positive action”.
For Marine Le Pen, it is “not up to the stakes”.
Initially, the bill was only to be the translation of a parliamentary report devoted to the “security continuum” with new prerogatives for municipal police forces and the structuring of the private security sector.
The deputies will first address these two reputedly more consensual themes, but which will not escape the banderillas of the oppositions, the Communists rejecting en bloc “a withdrawal of the State from its sovereign missions”. Conversely, the Agir group wishes to go further and in particular to generalize the arming of the municipal police.
But it is the last side of the text that will be the most perilous with a series of controversial security measures for which Place Beauvau has held the pen.
– “equilibrium position” –
The most controversial provision is article 24 which provides for penalizing one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros for the dissemination of “the image of the face or any other element of identification” of a police officer or a gendarme in intervention when the aim is to “undermine his physical or mental integrity”.
Supported by the police unions, the measure makes jump representatives of journalists and defenders of public freedoms who denounce “a disproportionate attack on freedom of expression”.
“This law is of no use because in French criminal law, there are already several provisions to protect police officers and sanction” those who would like to harm them, assured lawyer Arié Alimi, of the League of Rights of man, during the Parisian rally.
Faced with criticism, the leader of the LREM deputies Christophe Castaner tried to demine a text “far from caricatures”. “Neither the freedom of the press, nor the right to information, nor the fact of being able to film at any time the internal security forces in intervention are not called into question”, promised the ex-minister of the Interior.
According to one of the co-rapporteurs, Jean-Michel Fauvergue: it is a question of “regaining ground” in the “war of images” that “the authority, the State in particular, is losing”, whereas In the wake of the “yellow vests”, accusations of police violence have multiplied.
A “yellow vest” films police officers during a demonstration in Paris on February 23, 2019 (AFP / Zakaria ABDELKAFI)
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The “marchers” will not be able to count on their allies of the Modem who want to remove the provision and display reluctance on the text.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin threw a stone on Friday in the garden of LREM deputies and Christophe Castaner, pleading for a toughening of the text, with the obligation to “blur the faces of the police and the gendarmes”.
But in the National Assembly on Tuesday, he limited himself to supporting the measure and said he was “proud” of the text. Mr Castaner promised to maintain a “balanced position”.
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