Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

FYI, the details are very plain in the article. Enforcement falls clearly short of "plotting to overthrow the government":

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.

View on HN

«prosecuted simply for carrying goggles or masks to protect themselves»

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).

The article makes it clear that these are sperate and distinct from other charges for “organizing a protest without complying with notification requirements”.

> They were arrested because they participated to an unregistered (therefore forbidden) protest...

Protest permits really defeat the point though.

> 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.

I see.

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.

Maybe this evolves greater efficiency in social officers.

> In Marseille, a man who swore at a police officer who was about to hit a woman

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.

I'm quite happy to defer to your take on this particular protest.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com