Two associations have filed an appeal against Déméter, the anti-agribashing cell set up by the national gendarmerie. Pollinis and Générations Futures believe that this "monitoring system" puts "pressure" on associations denouncing industrial agriculture.
The appeal was filed Friday with the Paris administrative court. This "national cell for monitoring damage to the agricultural world", set up in mid-December, constitutes "pressure" on associations denouncing the methods of industrial agriculture, argues François Veillerette, from Générations futures, at AFP. .
⚖️ @ AssoPollinis and @genefutures file an appeal against the Demeter cell. @Veillerette @afpfr @missplanete @StephaneMandard 👉https: //t.co/RTbBi79Xoh pic.twitter.com/ZZ62f3KGkF
- Future Generations (@genefutures) April 14, 2020"Dangerously blurred" contours
According to the Ministry of the Interior, this cell makes it possible “to improve our cooperation with the agricultural world and to collect information”, “to better know the extremist groups behind the attacks and to be able to anticipate and prevent their actions” . It also makes it possible “to be able to gain efficiency through better coordinated actions and investigations”.
Pollinis and Future Generations see it as “a surveillance device whose contours are dangerously blurred”, according to a press release. The Demeter cell would target "" actions of an ideological nature ", including" simple symbolic actions of denigration of the agricultural environment "which fall within the freedom of thought and expression", denounce the associations.
Legally, for there to be disparagement, “you have to be in a competitive position,” explains François Veillerette. Applied to the activity of environmental associations, this concept seems to him "fanciful". In this appeal, the lawyer Corinne Lepage who defends the associations denounces “the attack on the freedom of communication and the secrecy of the instruction and the investigations” and “the rupture of equality between the representative agricultural unions and the serious delegation administrative police missions to private actors ”, according to the press release.
News
Agricultural Show: Theft of tractors, intrusions, damage ... The gendarmes watch over the farmers
Society
"Agribashing": "The problem is the disconnection between the population and the countryside", deplore the peasants
- Farmers
- Society
- Video
- Justice
- Agriculture