For months there have been protests all over France against the new security law, sometimes militant. Now thousands of people took to the streets again last weekend. Despite the fact that the controversial Article 24, which previously wanted to ban all filming of police officers at a demonstration, has now been "defused" and now "only" forbids filming with a mobile phone or camera with the intention of causing "physical or psychological" harm to the cop being filmed, the anger of the masses is not abating.
There is also talk of restricting the freedom of the press and tightening general surveillance among the protesters, who in total numbered over 32,000 and took to the streets all over France. And again there were fights with the police and again many people were arrested. And this despite the fact that the French police actually want to get away from their beating image. Because the police in France are suffering from a loss of trust among the population, almost 40% of the population no longer trust them, among the 18-30 year olds it is even 50%. It is also not surprising that after numerous publicised cases of racist police violence, half of young people consider the police to be racist.
Most recently, even Amnesty International, Humans Right Watch and four other human rights organisations had publicly criticised the racist actions of the French police and demanded that the French government respond to the allegations within four months, otherwise they would file a class- action lawsuit against France. The police union rejects the allegations and does not want to hear about it, while Macron now wants to convene a round table to discuss the problems with police union and representatives from civil society.
