The French are afraid to demonstrate against the pension reform because of the police: witnesses of police violence

While a petition filed on March 23, 2023 for the dissolution of the Brav-M (Brigade for the Suppression of Motorized Violent Action), signed by more than 260,000 people, was rejected by elected officials of the Laws Commission of the National Assembly on April 5, this it revives the debate about police violence and the role of the police itself.

Faced with the impunity enjoyed by many police officers, one wonders to what extent the police would be an extreme case in a rule of law, as the philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie theorizes. Indeed, it can produce its own law, reduce our rights to demonstrate, resist, even grant the right of life or death over our lives. Particularly those of racial minorities, given the 2017 Defender of Rights stats: young people perceived as black and Arab are 20 times more likely to be stopped by the police than the rest of the populationFor example.

As protests and strikes against pension reform continue in France, but fear of the police grows, this could be an opportunity to hear the edifying testimonies of direct or collateral victims of police violence. .

Olivio Gomes case, killed by the police in 2020: the testimony of his brother

On October 17, 2020 in Poissy, Olivio Gomes was killed by a policeman (three shots at close range) at the age of 28. The police officer in question is indicted for manslaughter shortly after the death. Madmoizelle had met her brother, Leonel Gomes, to tell her story, and above all the consequences.

The testimony of Michel Zecler, beaten by the police in 2020

On the occasion of the release of his book Standing, Madmoizelle had also met Michel Zecler. A police team beat him as he returned to his recording studio in the 17th arrondissement of Paris on November 21, 2020. The broadcast of the video of his arrest had a media impact, all the more so as numerous demonstrations against racism and police violence. At the same time, a bill related to global security was debated in the National Assembly.

Four police officers were suspended for the duration of the investigation and then charged on November 30, 2020. Two of them were immediately jailed, then released on December 22, 2020, under strict judicial supervision, the other two are placed under surveillance judicial. We met Michel Zecler a year after the assault on him:

These two testimonies represent only a small fraction of the police violence observed in France for decades. Think also of the repression at the Charonne metro station of the February 8, 1962 demonstration, a textbook case of police violence against people demonstrating against the Secret Armed Organization and the Algerian War, which ultimately killed nine people. But also in the riots of May 1967 in Guadeloupe (event called in Creole ” I 67 “), where the gendarmes violently repressed the demonstrators, causing at least 8 deaths (even 87 according to Georges Lemoine, then Secretary of State for the French Overseas Territories under Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, in 1985), during strikes following a racist attack. Or the death of Malik Oussekine in 1964; Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré in 2005; Lamine Dieng, Moushin Sehhouli and Laramy Samoura in 2007; Amine Bentounsi in 2012; Rémi Fraisse in 2014; Adama Traoré in 2016; Liu Shaoyao and Angelo Garand in 2017; Zineb Rédouane in 2018; Steve Maia Canico in 2019; or even Cédric Chouviat in 2020. Deaths treated as isolated news when we could connect the dots to draw conclusions.