Human Rights Watch called on Sunday Emmanuel Macron to announce "concrete reforms" to end "abusive and discriminatory identity checks" and "racism in the police", following protests in France for denounce police violence.

"French President Emmanuel Macron should indicate the implementation of concrete reforms to end racism in the police" during his speech scheduled for 8 pm, asked Sunday the NGO for the defense of human rights Human Rights Watch man in a statement. Reforms which, she adds, "should include the end of abusive and discriminatory identity checks (...) at the heart of concerns about institutional racism and discrimination in the country". 

Report released documenting improper police checks

Saturday, thousands of people demonstrated in France against police violence at the call of the family of Adama Traoré, a young black man who died in July 2016 after his arrest by the gendarmes. The issue of police violence has come back to the fore in France in the wake of a global movement sparked by the murder in the United States of George Floyd, a black forties, asphyxiated by a white police officer.

"Tens of thousands of people in the country rightly denounce racism and discrimination in the French police, especially during identity checks," said Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director of Human Rights Watch, in a statement. The NGO also announces the release of a report entitled "They talk to us like dogs", which documents "repeated and baseless police checks targeting ethnic minorities, including children as young as 10 years old".

Towards 'identity check receipts'?

Human Rights Watch therefore requests Emmanuel Macron to support the introduction of "'identity control receipts' or any other effective means to guarantee that data relating to controls are systematically collected". In a recent interview with AFP, the Defender of rights Jacques Toubon had also estimated that the traceability of controls was necessary, and possible, as shown by the recent period of confinement.