The images of the violence that punctuated the most recent demonstrations against the pension reform and, even more, those of the clashes between gendarmes and opponents of the water reservoirs on March 25 in the Deux-Sèvres have revived the controversy over the maintenance of order à la française.

In Sainte-Soline, 47 gendarmes were wounded, according to authorities. The organizers reported 200 injured among the demonstrators, forty of them seriously. One of them was still in a coma.

If he noted the presence of "ultraviolent groups", the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, judged in Le Monde the response of the police "largely disproportionate". The Council of Europe was alarmed by the "excessive use of force".

Associations, lawyers, magistrates and left-wing politicians denounced the same excessive use of force in the processions against the pension reform, particularly on the part of the BRAV-M (motorized police unit in Paris), as well as "preventive arrests" and the use of intermediate weapons (LBD, grenade of encirclement ...).

'Overturning values'

In an attempt to defuse criticism, the Minister of the Interior has multiplied in recent days in the media, with the same argument.

Police violence is not systemic and "never" he "has had his hand tremble for those who dishonor their uniform," he told the JDD, stressing that "111" police and gendarmes had been punished for "disproportionate use of force" in 2021.

He also highlighted the "violence" of some demonstrators and pointed the finger at the far left and the rebellious France who "hates the police".

"When violence, thugs and the ultra-left get involved, then it is the duty of the police to say stop," he told the JDD. "I refuse to give in to the intellectual terrorism of the far left, which consists in overturning values: the thugs would become the aggressors and the police the aggressors."

Last Tuesday, he initiated a procedure for the dissolution of the movement "The Uprisings of the Earth" (SLT), co-organizer of the demonstration of Sainte-Soline, and announced Sunday the creation of an "anti-ZAD" cell. "A declaration of war" by the minister, SLT blasted.

Sociologist Olivier Fillieule, a specialist in policing, told AFP that at the beginning of the movement against the pension reform, "the LBD and the de-encirclement grenades were less used".

"Politicized" subject

"Since then, it has hardened with the (use of article) 49.3, but there has been no massive use of LBD and grenades," notes Mr. Fillieule. "If the response is excessive, we create more disorder than we reduce it."

A senior officer of the national police argues to AFP that with "the more massive presence of radicals", the police intervene "more massively to lower the tension" in the demonstrations. "At the beginning of the movement, there was no reason to be as close as possible."

As for the concept of "de-escalation" - which emerged about ten years ago - Mr. Fillieule stresses that the France has "always kept a distance".

Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez said his troops are "de-escalating all the time." "We intervene when there are abuses and we withdraw," he said on BFMTV Sunday.

Policing has always been an extremely flammable subject in France. Not surprising according to the sociologist, for whom "France is the country in Europe where (it) is the most politicized, that is to say used by politics for political purposes".

The verbal jousting between Gérald Darmanin and LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is an illustration of this. The first accuses the second of being an "arsonist" and the second reproaches the first "a desire to dramatize to create (a) party of order".

© 2023 AFP