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Comment by slim | Hacker News Reader

French police trained them (Tunisia was a colony of France during WW2)

I'm starting to think that the French police are the worst in the EU at least. And here I was thinking that the Dirty Harry cop in the Dobermann movie was a caricature. Looking at the news of the last few years it seems they really are that deranged.

1. Police answer a domestic case by kicking down the door and shooting the father of the (Asian) family without warning:

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2083188/more-...

2. Riot cops shoot a mother and her children at the outskirts of a Gillets Jaunes demo, one of the kids loses a hand:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/30/french-police-...

3. Police anally rape a young (black) man with an expandable baton during an identity check:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38892302

4. Police assault a (black) musician in his studio, allege "smell of cannabis" emanated from within:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55127815

And all this is happening in a democratic country at the heart of the EU. If the police in Tunisia are taking lessons from the French police, I'd be worried about the safety of anti-regime Tunisians.

Of note, I come from a European country that is ostensibly a democracy and I know well that all the democratic laws in the world are not enough to control a bunch of jumped-up brutes given the authority to beat up their fellow citizens.

Those are terrible things, but in order to understand them in anything approaching a meaningful way you need to have the denominator. How many people are there in France? How many police interactions in a year? Without meaningful denominators to give context it doesn't help to know these things, and I'd argue you should probably avoid knowing them. I think you should avoid knowing them because they are merely attempts to exploit your attention for revenue.

Tunisia never was a colony of France, it was a protectorate. Words have meaning, so please stop spreading disinformation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectorate

"Le protectorat colonial se distingue de la colonie dans la mesure où un territoire colonisé est placé sous l’administration directe de la métropole dont il fait partie intégrante, tandis que le territoire sous protectorat conserve théoriquement une relative autonomie." https://bibliotheque-numerique.diplomatie.gouv.fr/MEAE/fr/pr...

France does not get to invent a new name for colonialism and just get away with it

And Egypt was a "protectorate" and Sudan and Vanuatu were "condominia", let's get real here.

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