A hundred people gathered to demonstrate against the Global Security Law in front of the Senate, Tuesday March 16 -

Jeanne Accorsini / SIPA

Several hundred people gathered on Tuesday in calm in France to demand the withdrawal of the proposed law "Global security", which they consider liberticidal and whose examination by the Senate has just begun, noted journalists from the 'AFP.

In Paris, the demonstrators were gathered in front of the High Assembly, waving placards on which one could read "Democracy bludgeon", "Blurred police, blind justice".

Several elected officials were also present, including environmental senator Esther Benbassa, communist senator Pierre Laurent or LFI deputy Eric Coquerel.

Meetings in Nantes and Rennes

As part of a week of mobilization, other gatherings were organized in several cities.

In Nantes, according to the police count, 500 people marched Tuesday afternoon from the prefecture to the Graslin Theater, occupied for nearly a week by intermittents as part of the national movement to occupy cultural places.

Gathering also in peace in Rennes where about twenty people gathered in front of the office of Senator PS Ille-et-Vilaine Sylvie Robert, to say no to the text but also to the registration of trade unionists.

"Infringement of fundamental freedoms"

The demonstrators responded to the call of the Stop global security law coordination, mobilized since November at the initiative of journalists' unions and the Human Rights League, joined by various organizations for the defense of freedoms and "yellow vests ".

This text is "offensive to fundamental freedoms, to the freedom to inform and to be informed", summed up in front of the Parisian crowd Emmanuel Poupard, first secretary general of the National Union of Journalists (SNJ).

Generalization of drones and pedestrian cameras

Already adopted by the deputies, this very controversial bill, in particular for its article 24 which aims to penalize the malicious dissemination of the image of the police officers, is examined on Tuesday at first reading in the Senate.

Hundreds of amendments have been tabled and Article 24 has been completely rewritten in committee.

But for the collective, the bill is irrecoverable.

"The entire law indiscriminately broadens the powers of surveillance of the police, by generalizing the use of drones and pedestrian cameras, devices that can be linked to facial recognition software that destroy any notion of privacy in the 'public space', underlines the coordination.

500,000 people in November

This text, "with the bill" consolidating the principles of the Republic ", the decrees expanding the political file or the recent attacks on academic freedoms, is the symbol of an evolution from a State of law towards a State of police ”, plead the members of the collective.

The last national mobilization against the bill, on January 30, brought together 32,770 people, according to the Ministry of the Interior, "several tens of thousands" according to the coordination.

The most important day of mobilization, November 28, had gathered 500,000 people in the country according to the coordination, 133,000 according to the government.

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