Human rights backslide in France: The Republic on the way back

 
Human rights backslide in France: The Republic on the way back
x Rémy Herrera: The real violence is here, in this extraordinarily unjust and unsustainable system

Article written by the author in January 2019 that served as the basis for a report on human rights violations in France presented by Center Europe - Tiers Monde of Geneva (CETIM, a non-governmental organization recognized as a general consultative entity) to the HR Council of the United Nations for its fortieth session from February 25 to March 22, 2019. Point 4 "Human Rights Situations that require the Council's attention".

France has been in an area of ​​strong turbulence for several months. The virulence of social conflicts has long been an important feature that has marked the political life of this country, as well as a historical fact of a nation that was cemented, fundamentally after 1789, on the basis of a revolution of universal scope , whose traces - along with the social conquests of 1936, 1945 or those of 1968 - are still present in the collective memory and in the institutions, independently of the attempts to erase them.

However, it will soon be 40 years since France, as well as other countries in the North, without exception, was trapped under the lethal yoke of devastating neoliberal policies. These can only be interpreted as an extraordinary social violence against the world of work. Its destructive effects (for people and society, but also for the environment) are spread thanks to the complicity of the state with the powerful of the moment. The situation is further aggravated by the alienation of national sovereignty and submission to the European Union, rejected by French citizens in the referendum of 2005 and imposed on them through a denial of democracy.

This is an additional violence inflicted on an entire people. In this singular perspective, and in the general context of a systemic crisis of globalized capitalism, the waves of popular uprisings that have amplified in the last decades are explained: strikes in 1995, suburban riots in 2005 -07, demonstrations in the 2000s and 2010 ... Currently, the feeling of discomfort and discontent is widespread. Started at the end of October 2018, the movement of the so-called "yellow vests" represents another uprising, but faces the worst upsurge in police violence since the Algerian war. Faced with the various calls for social justice, the authorities have chosen to respond with more repression, to the point of regressing in an extremely worrying way in human rights.

The state of exception, starting point of a repressive escalation

It is easy to identify the moment in which this repressive escalation began: it began with the state of emergency, decreed in the metropolitan territory on November 14, 2015 (after the terrorist attacks that hit the country the previous day), and extending on the 18th. November to the overseas departments. Certainly it is not a matter here of minimizing the terrorist threats of extremist political Islam, from Al Qaeda to Daesh, but it must be understood that the security policy adopted since 2015 has been, simultaneously, an opportunity to force the French people to accept important restrictions on their civil and political rights, surpassing the necessary reaction to terrorist risks.

After renewing five times in a row, the state of emergency was lifted on November 1, 2017, but most of its exceptional provisions have now acquired the force of law: preventative searches and arrests, protection perimeters, individual house arrests, border controls, etc., are now authorized under the "law to reinforce internal security and the fight against terrorism" of October 30, 2017. Since then, in France, there is a disturbing detour of this imposing arsenal legal exception, whose effect is to reduce public freedoms, especially freedom of expression, assembly or the right to demonstrate peacefully, as well as trade union rights and even the right to physical integrity, all in serious danger.

Those and those who have recently participated in demonstrations in France, have witnessed, without doubt, what the French and international human rights organizations have been denouncing in recent months: many of the interventions of the forces of order are disproportionate and excessively violent , sometimes even resorting to weapons of war. In this way, the use of tear gas and high pressure water cannons against peaceful protesters has become systematic; It is also very common to shoot rubber balls at chest height as well as the use of other weapons of "
  
reduced lethality", stun grenades, the practice of "encapsulation" to avoid joining other protesters, random and arbitrary arrests, verbal intimidation, gratuitous provocations, and even physical aggression.

In the streets of the capital have been deployed armored vehicles, police on horseback, teams of police dogs ... Often, degrading treatment is inflicted on protesters, including minors. It is also common for people to be beaten or locked up without committing any crime. The "street doctors", on the other hand, volunteers who follow the processions and help the wounded, see how their medical equipment is confiscated ... all of which shocks the French. The latter is what is sought precisely to end their revolt. Such police violence is absolutely unacceptable and violates current international human rights standards.

First stage: the repression of social movements and unions

Since the election to the Presidency of the Republic of Emmanuel Macron, former managing shareholder of the Rothschild business bank, Minister of Economy of President François Hollande and author of eponymous laws that impose the flexibilization of the labor market, the union world has once again mobilized .

Demonstrations and strikes have multiplied, especially in the sectors of public transport (SNCF, Air France ...), energy (gas and electricity), automotive (Peugeot, Renault), telecommunications (Orange), large-scale distribution (Carrefour ), health services (public hospitals, nursing homes, social security), education (secondary schools, universities), culture (museums), justice (lawyers, magistrates), garbage collection, and even financial and account audits.

These diverse social movements, very followed, occurred throughout the spring of 2018. The reaction of the power was to intensify the repression, which affected dramatically the students (evacuation of the campuses), the environmental activists who occupied the "Zones to defend "(ZAD for its acronym in French) and, in particular, the protesters against the labor market flexibilization laws.

This repressive spiral had already affected the unions for several years, violating labor legislation. In fact, obstacles to union activities multiplied: wage discrimination against trade unionists, unjustified dismissals of strikers, pressure exercised through threats or disciplinary sanctions, restrictions on trade union rights or the right to strike, and even the criminalization of union action (as in Goodyear, Continental or Air France). In addition, recent government reforms of the labor law further penalize social movements: shorter time limits for appealing to labor courts and establishing a maximum limit for compensation in case of unfair dismissal; merger of representative instances of workers and limitation of their means; mechanisms for the termination of agreed collective agreements, without taking into account labor protection measures or facilitating the departure of older workers; inversion of the hierarchy of rules that places the agreement of the company above collective agreements and the law; establishment of the so-called national perimeter for dismissals for economic reasons, facilitating the dismissal of employees of French subsidiaries (while the parent company obtains benefits on a global scale).

Second stage: the repression of the «yellow vests»

President Macron opted to "stay the course". At the expense of the suffering and expectations of workers, their government exacerbates neoliberal policies and deepens more and more in social violence and police repression. The result is a nightmare, unworthy of a country that claims to be democratic and tolerant. From the beginning of the mobilization of the yellow vests, there were 11 accidental deaths, more than 2,000 people were injured, of which at least a hundred with a very serious prognosis. The doctors described the injuries as "war wounds" (hand blasting, loss of eyes, disfigurement, multiple fractures and various mutilations ...), due in particular to shooting with rubber balls or shots of grenades, often directed to peaceful protesters. To this day, many people are still in a coma.

 Adolescents, on the other hand, suffer psychological trauma after being treated as terrorists by the police, forcing them to kneel with their heads bowed, their hands behind their necks and piled up in vans and cells.

Where does this power go that tramples on its people and unleashes such violence against it? On December 1, for example, 7,940 tear gas grenades, 800 stun grenades and 339 grenade type GLI-F4 (explosive munitions), 776 rubber ball cartridges, as well as cannons with 140,000 liters of water were launched. The provisional balance, and certainly not exhaustive, corresponding only to the period from November 17, 2018 to January 7, 2019, shows 6,475 arrests and 5,339 preventive detentions.

The courts handed down more than a thousand convictions throughout the national territory. Although most of these sentences end in community work, many are jail sentences. In addition, there are 153 arrest warrants (which implies imprisonment), 519 judicial summonses and 372 in correctional facilities ... In Paris, 249 people were tried in immediate appearance, 58 sentenced to prison, 63 to prison terms ... French department of Reunion, the average number of final prison sentences for local yellow vests is eight months. As of January 10, 2019, some 200 people linked to these events were still incarcerated in France.

The legitimacy of popular demands

In many ways, the demands of the yellow vests are similar to those of the workers. They demand the immediate and concrete improvement of living conditions, the revaluation of the purchasing power of income (salaries, pensions, subsidies ...), the strengthening of public services, the participation of the people in decisions regarding their collective future ... In other words, an effective implementation, above all, of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as the right of the people to decide on their future. By demanding more social justice, respect for human rights and economic and political democracy, these demands are resoundingly legitimate and have great support from the population.

The mother of all violence, which must cease urgently and against which people are forced to defend themselves, as stated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, in the preamble of the French constitution, is that that generates the imposition of unfair, ruthless, antisocial and antidemocratic neoliberal measures; that which, in the silence of the price adjustments of the capitalist markets, causes the homeless to die of cold, pushes the indebted farmers to suicide, destroys people and their families by depriving them of jobs, cutting off their electricity, expelling them from their homes; that which, due to lack of resources, forces retirees to stop heating their homes or their children to skip a meal; that which ends with all solidarity, closes schools, maternity centers or psychiatric hospitals, immerses in despair small traders and craftsmen who sink under burdens, drowning workers who can not make ends meet ...

The real violence is here, in this extraordinarily unjust and unsustainable system. That said, the attacks on shop windows and shop windows of banks and supermarkets by some isolated and helpless individuals are certainly reprehensible but in no case a justification of the violence exerted by the forces of order.

* Rémy Herrera is a researcher at the CNRS

Full text at: https://www.lahaine.org/bT8L