Two weeks after the previous “freedom marches”, opponents of the Global Security law meet again on Saturday across France. Journalists’ unions, defenders of public freedoms and amateurs of “free parties” call for mobilization to demand the abandonment of the text.
Launched in November by journalists’ unions and the Human Rights League (LDH), the movement to which many other organizations have joined, and which is also supported by yellow vests, calls for the withdrawal of several key provisions of the text, starting with article 24 which penalizes the malicious dissemination of images of members of the police.
The government defends this measure, which it believes aims to protect police officers who are victims of hate calls and murder on social networks. The collective “# StopLoiS SécuritéGlobale”, which has so far unsuccessfully requested to be received by President Emmanuel Macron, also targets articles 21 and 22 on the use of pedestrian cameras and drones by the police.
He is also opposed to the “new national plan for maintaining order” (SNMO), regularly invoked by the police to limit media coverage of the demonstrations. “With this bill would come a whole arsenal of tools to restrict public freedoms and amplify repression: preventing the filming of police practices, generalized surveillance by drone and by camera-pedestrian, the granting of dangerous powers to private companies of security…“, plead the members of the collective.
“The text will pass to the Senate in mid-March before returning to the (National) Assembly. We have to bring it down“, they added in a statement this week, calling for a new mobilization on Saturday”everywhere in France“.
Dozens of gatherings planned in France
Gatherings are planned in particular in Paris, place de la République, early Saturday afternoon, and in Lyon, place du Maréchal Lyautey, as well as in dozens of other cities according to the sites of the collective and the LDH, in particular in Strasbourg, Rennes, Chambéry, Arras, Toulon, Clermont-Ferrand …
Since the start of the examination of the bill, the number of demonstrators has varied from month to month. The most important day of mobilization, November 28, had gathered 500,000 people in the country according to the coordination, 133,000 according to the government.
The “freedom marches” of January 16, for their part, gathered 34,000 people in France according to the police, and 200,000 according to the organizers, according to data provided by the Ministry of the Interior and the SNJ-CGT union to the AFP.
The bill has been strongly criticized in recent months, in France by the Defender of Rights and the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, and abroad by special rapporteurs of the United Nations and the Commissioner for Human Rights. ‘Council of Europe man
–
