The Al-Jazeera correspondent in Paris reported that tens of thousands of demonstrators are protesting in La Basté Square in the center of the French capital, and that confrontations occurred between them and the police who cordoned off the square. .
Security forces fired tear gas bombs at demonstrators protesting against police violence, after masked men threw stones and fireworks at policemen and set up roadblocks.
Al-Jazeera correspondent Lotfi Al-Masoudi said that the protesters against the draft comprehensive security law see Article 24 of the bill as a threat to public freedoms and the principles on which the French Republic was founded.
Representatives of trade unions and journalists in France say that this article will prevent journalists from carrying out their supervisory role over state institutions, including the police.
Reuters reported that demonstrators today set fire to some public properties in the streets, and clashed with the police while trying to prevent access to some streets, and the agency added that thousands of French protested in the cities of Lille, Rennes, Strasbourg, Marseille and others against the bill that criminalizes the circulation of police images under circumstances. And a certain amount, which opponents describe as limiting press freedom.
Many of the protesters carried banners reading "Who will protect us from the police?", "Stop police violence," and "Strike democracy."
It is led by journalists and cameras ... Mass protests in # France in rejection of the "comprehensive security" law, which provides for punishment for those who broadcast pictures of security forces while they are working. Pic.twitter.com/NoNKdP41ON
- Al-Jazeera Channel (@AJArabic) November 28, 2020
Government retreat
Representatives of trade unions and journalists expressed their surprise that Prime Minister Jean Castex had backed down from his promise to journalists' representatives that an independent special committee would reformulate the controversial article, as he retreated on Friday 24 hours after the promise, after he was under pressure from the ruling majority in Parliament, which refuses Drafting the article outside the dome of the legislative institution.
Castex said yesterday that Article 24 will be drafted by Parliament, and that an independent committee will have an advisory role in support of the work of lawmakers.
Article 24 stipulates a one-year prison sentence and a fine of 45,000 euros for anyone who broadcasts pictures of police and gendarmes motivated by "bad faith."
The government says this article aims to protect individuals who face hate campaigns and calls for murder on social media, while revealing details from their private lives.
However, opponents of the text point out that many of the violence cases committed by the police would not have been revealed had they not been picked up by the lenses of journalists and citizens' phones.
And the smartest protest today is the assault by police officers of beating and insulting a week ago on an African-American music producer inside a studio where he works in a neighborhood of Paris.
The publication of a video of the CCTV inside the studio on Thursday sparked a wave of anger and condemnation in the country, as the French presidency said yesterday that President Emmanuel Macron was "very shocked" by pictures of police beating the music producer.