Pensions: a hundred complaints filed in Paris for "arbitrary arrests"

Europe 1 with AFP 18:08 p.m., March 31, 2023, modified at 18:12 p.m., March 31, 2023

"A hundred complaints" were filed in Paris on Friday to denounce "arbitrary arrests and detentions" as part of the mobilization against the pension reform, announced a collective of lawyers at a press conference. For the twenty lawyers, represented in particular by Coline Bouillon, Ainoha Pascual, Raphaël Kempf, Alexis Baudelin who spoke during the press conference, these numerous arrests and detentions in recent weeks are irrelevant and aim "to break the social movement".

Largely arbitrary deprivations of liberty

According to Raphaël Kempf, the complaints were filed Friday morning with the Paris judicial court against the largely "arbitrary" deprivations of liberty, according to him, especially given the low rate of prosecutions that followed. According to Alice Becker, the proceedings in the capital would indeed be the subject of "75% of dismissal without follow-up" on the part of the Paris prosecutor's office.

The complaints implicate the security forces and the judiciary and are based on three offences: arbitrary interference with personal liberty by a person holding public authority, failure to intervene to stop an unlawful deprivation of liberty and obstruction of the freedom to demonstrate. Like his colleagues, Master Coline Bouillon denounced "police custody". Ainoha Pascual also criticized "the violence that takes place during these arrests and in parallel", which according to her will be the subject of separate complaints "in the coming days". "We are supported by many institutions, by the Defender of Rights in particular who continues to warn about these abusive arrests, about the disproportionate means put in place by the police and the prosecutor's office in this mobilization to dissuade people from returning to demonstrations.

"Police repression"

In a democracy, this is not acceptable," said Alexis Baudelin. For several weeks, organisations such as the League of Human Rights (LDH), the Union of Magistrates (SM, classified on the left), the Union of France Lawyers (SAF, classified on the left), but also the political parties of the left, criticize a "police repression". Some of these organizations have filed various appeals against "preventive" arrests, bans on night gatherings. Claire Hédon, the Defender of Rights, "warned about the consequences of arrests that would be preventive" and about "ethical breaches in the maintenance of order".