Based on videos posted online and testimonies, several associations, including Human Rights Watch and the League for Human Rights, denounced, this Friday, the use of "abusive" police controls and "violence" to enforce containment.
"After only ten days of confinement, videos and testimonies apparently of abusive controls and violence by the police began to emerge on social networks," said about twenty associations and unions, in a joint statement .
"The state of health emergency must not be in breach with the rule of law"
The signatories call on the Minister of the Interior and the director general of the National Police "to ensure that the maintenance of order and control operations in the context of the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic do not not open to abuse ”.
"They must immediately remind the police in charge of controls that these operations must take place within a strictly legal framework, without discrimination, and without resorting to dangerous and potentially fatal techniques against people," they added. "The state of health emergency must not be in breach with the rule of law and cannot justify discriminatory controls or an unjustified or disproportionate use of force by the French police", argue these associations and unions.
An intensification of "illegal practices"
Human Rights Watch, The Human Rights League, the French Lawyers' Union (SAF), the collective against Islamophobe in France (CCIF), the student and high school student unions Unef, Solidaires and UNL are among others signatories, with other local associations located in Ile-de-France, regions of Toulouse, Lyon or Grenoble. They also criticize, "in some cases", statements of "xenophobic or homophobic character".
These associations fear that the intensification of these "illegal practices" could "threaten national cohesion" and "compromise the adhesion of part of the population to containment measures". "We recognize the crucial importance of the collective mission entrusted to the police to enforce containment measures and the difficulties they face, but we strongly denounce any abuse in the implementation of this mission", conclude the signatories.
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