Literal thought crimes. I wish I could say my country handles this stuff better with a straight face, but there has been a very recent, almost worldwide, shift towards authoritarianism.
You may risk arrest if you "come prepared", or don't follow police orders to move on or back off.
During the Yellow Vests protests some people showed up with helmets, gas masks, and home-made shields, then complained that the police were infringing on their right to 'peaceful' protest when they were prevented from joining the demonstration or arrested...
Dress like if you were out for a walk, which you are, and behave in the same way, and the police won't do anything to you.
Are you referring to any of the exquisitely cherry picked videos that were highly edited to convey the militants talking points?
Better yet, are you able to provide a single example that supports your assertion?
> It also does make sense to come protected when the police use dangerous weapons and violent strategies against protests.
That assertion makes absolutely no sense in france, specially as you're referring to one-off protests where activists plan to riot and assault people and destroy property.
There is plenty of journalist who did a good job to report violence also. You can look for articles in 2018 and 2019 mainly.
> That assertion makes absolutely no sense in france, specially as you're referring to one-off protests where activists plan to riot and assault people and destroy property.
You don't know much about what has been happening in France apparently. I'm not talking about the actions of far-right parties to discredit protests or the few people that joins protests just for the fight but people who are protesting in the first place.
The protestors are exposing themselves to be the chair à canon of political movements (which might or might not have ulterior motives)
These are explicit acts, not thoughts, and not new offences.
"Contempt of public official", I think they mean "outrage a agent" in French, does not mean the feeling but the act of showing 'contempt' as in insulting or threatening.
For example, if you take part in a demonstration and you insult a police officer for whatever reason they can arrest you for "contempt of public official".
"Participation in a group with a view to committing violent acts", which is not an offence specific to France, allows the police to arrest and charge people before they commit violent acts when it is clear through their actions that this is what they are planning. In relation to public demonstrations this may mean a group of people showing up with helmet, shield, or legal 'weapons' (e.g. slingshot and steel beads, or what not).
Likewise for the ban on face coverings, it is primarily to deal with people showing up with bike helmets, gas masks, etc. in order to (a) protect themselves against tear gas, and (b) not be identified (usually while they commit violence against police and property).
> "“It is ironic that a country with such a long and proud tradition of collective action for social change is criminalizing protest in this way"
On the contrary, it's because France has a long tradition of 'collective action' (i.e. really riots and revolutions) that a body of laws to counter violence has come about.
> The French authorities must stop criminalizing people and amend all the laws that hamper the right to peaceful assembly.
The offences mentioned above are not related to peaceful assembly.
Amnesty International is being rather disingenuous in this article.
>> Literal thought crimes.
> These are explicit acts, not thoughts, and not new offences.
> "Contempt of public official", I think they mean "outrage a agent" in French, does not mean the feeling but the act of showing 'contempt' as in insulting or threatening.
As the expression is usually used, "thought crimes" can refer to speech acts.
This may reflect a difference between American ideas of free speech and those more common in Europe. (I don't understand the variety of European views very well.) Most Americans are going to view anything that smacks of lèse majesté as a thought crime and react accordingly. And I don't think we're wrong to do so.
Certainly threats are not free speech. Insults may indeed be considered free speech, but it's hard to argue that insults used in the way described in the law being discussed (which is about serious insults and threats to people while they're working) can serve any useful purpose including in terms of expressing one's opinion.
Note that in France this applies to anyone performing a "public service" so you would also in principle be committing an offence by insulting a bus driver.
I don't think this is unwarranted or excessive. Free speech is very important but, at least in Europe, people think that this does not give you the right to insult the police, bus drivers, firemen, teachers, etc. to their face while they're working.
I note further than in the US "fighting words, "threatening the President", "obscenities", and "true threats" are not protected under free speech.
In Marseille, a man who swore at a police officer who was about to hit a woman with his baton during a protest was himself beaten, held in pre-trial detention for 24 hours, convicted for contempt and fined €900. He also had to pay €1,000 in damages to the police officer, while no action has been taken against the police officers.
Protesters have been arrested and prosecuted simply for carrying goggles or masks to protect themselves from tear gas and rubber bullets.
This is quite a dishonest interpretation of the facts. They were arrested because they participated to an unregistered (therefore forbidden) protest, there was proper communication from the police that such event was not authorized because of the expected violence issues, and the goggles / masks were proof of participation.
It's pretty easy to start a protest rally or march in france, you just have to declare it to the prefecture. Sometimes they are not accepted, for instance when a protest with violence history wants to pass in certain parts of the city with a lot of shop (they are regularly attacked). It happens that violent protestors such as the yellow vest types declare a march passing for instance the Champs Elysee avanue (famous locally for its numerous shops), knowing it will be rejected, then calling it a dictature when it happens, and doing it anyway, and there the violence begins. The Amesty report says nothing of this context, I have no idea why (I can guess it probably is because they support the yellow vest movement).
Protest permits really defeat the point though.
They are not protest permits. They are protest announcements. The only requirement is that protest organizers need to inform public officials beforehand that they are going to hold a protest on day x at place y. Consequently public officials are able to prepare conditions to ensure a) the protest can be held and b) counterprotests cannot interfere, c) neutrsl third parties (that is, people who wish to go on with their lives as they didn't want to participate) are not forced to be sucked into the mess.
And once announced public officials cannot stop a protest from happening.
Otherwise we would see football moorings being described as peaceful protests under free speech instead of what they really are.
It's fair to me that protestors should enable safety officers, but I believe they should not wait for permission.
I understand that football excitement is a tectonic force, but I'm focusing on more humanist exploits.
Thank you for this perspective. I'd really appreciate the message to efficiently get across when constituents are repressed.
Is there any evidence that supports in any way that one-sided and deeply biased personal assertion of what really happened during the protest?
Because it's unbelievable that a man, who just happens to be directly involved in a violent riot with a long track record of destruction of property and assault on passer-bys and even law enforcement just so happens to be there in the thick of it just minding his own business and doing absolutely nothing to no one at all until he just so happened to find a moral argument that led him to just blurb a mild curse word directed at a bad police man, and only that, at the wrong time.
Incidentally, cases like these are the real motivators of these slippery slope legislation hikes. We have been seeing semi-professional activist organizations exploiting and abusing any conceivable loophole to avoid any legal consequence of their violent actions, under the guise of democracy and free speech, that they are single-handedly screwing up everyone out of their rights.
In general, I just find the issue of "sedition" interesting. On the one hand, it makes sense that a minority not take it upon themselves to override a democratically elected government. On the other, people plotting an uprising, often use the rationale that the government is only democratic in name.