Every country has its faults and no country is perfect. I love France the culture, the language, and the people. Even though I sometimes have this habit of romanticizing France, it is a country rooted full with problems and injustices. Especially those with racism, Islamophobia, and much more. With all the attention placed on America these past few weeks, a lot of news has been missed of what's going on around the world.
Pretty recently, the government of President Emmanuel Macron was pushing legislation to make it illegal to publish images or videos of police offers a security bill that makes it illegal to publish images of police officers with the intent to cause them harm. Macron says he wants to protect police from online hate (what!).
Well, that sounds like a load of BS.
Why would you not be able to record this? Again, it's a different country I don't know all their laws but, this certainly does make it more difficult for victims of police brutality to report and expose what happened to them.
Literally, about a month ago a video came to light of officers beating up a Black music producer, Michel Zecler. Four of the officers were put under investigation and two of them are in jail.
My point is that if there was no footage or if it was illegal, the evidence of misconduct by the police would not hold up in their court of law or it would certainly make it even more difficult to get justice.
There have been two weeks of protest (as I write this) across France protesting this bill. There have been some peaceful but there have been many clashes between police and "Black Bloc" anarchists.
After many protests and anger across the country, Macron and his government are saying that they will rewrite this bill but, there are many critics saying that it is not enough and that the government has a particular way of taking away freedoms from people but, still preaching about those said freedoms.
In France, there are "identity checks" which I found to be pretty weird and discriminatory. Police can randomly stop you and ask you for proof of your identity and many police officers abuse this. You can read more about this here
Macron has admitted that people of color are more likely to be stopped by police for ID checks than whites so, he will create an online platform would be created for citizens to log unwarranted searches.
First of all, What? I don't think a log will solve any problems. The person is still going to have to go through that trauma of not even knowing if they are going to make it home that day. Maybe this is a good step to fixing the problem but, the problem is this weird identity check process. Again, I am not from France but, as an outsider looking in, this is what I think and let others know what is going on.
Mayra
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