Pensions: Fabien Roussel denounces the "hardening of the policy of policing"

Laura Laplaud 09:11, March 28, 2023

This Tuesday marks the tenth day of mobilization against the pension reform. According to information from Europe 1, the intelligence services estimate that between 650,000 and 900,000 people are expected in the processions throughout France. Among the demonstrators, "black blocs" are also expected. And faced with the risk of new violence, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin detailed Monday an unprecedented device, with 13,000 police and gendarmes deployed, including 5,500 in Paris.

Invited by Europe Matin on Tuesday, the national secretary of the PCF, Fabien Roussel, regrets the "hardening of the policy of maintaining order". "A law enforcement policy must guarantee that everyone can protest and especially those who wish to demonstrate peacefully, can do so peacefully. This is what the trade unions are asking for: to continue to march peacefully as they have done from the beginning," he told Europe 1.

>> Find the interview of 8:13 am in replay and podcast here

"Policing policy leads to police violence"

According to Fabien Roussel, this hardening "causes human damage" and "contributes to focus the news on this violence". "There are three million demonstrators in our country, there are 1,000 black blocs and we are only talking about the 1,000 black blocs!" said the author of Les Jours heureux sont devant nous published by Le Cherche-Midi. The national secretary of the PCF wonders how the Ministry of the Interior can let them pass. "How is it that they manage to be in front of the processions of the trade union organizations and that they can attack the police as much as the trade unions?"

"There is a kind of complicity that makes it possible to rot the social movement"

"For me, there is a lack of reaction from the police and a kind of complicity that makes it possible to rot the social movement," he thundered. "There is a desire on the part of the president of the Republic to radicalize the movement, to arouse anger," concluded Fabien Roussel.