The police crackdown in Paris and the drift towards dictatorship in France
Yesterday, barely two weeks since the November 13 terror attacks killed 130 and led to the closure of large sections of Paris around République Square, violence again erupted in the streets of the city. With 120,000 soldiers and police forces deployed across France, and fully 6,300 police and paramilitary riot police mobilized in downtown Paris alone, République Square was again blocked off by a massive police cordon.
The target of this deployment, held under the state of emergency imposed after the November 13 attacks by the Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande, was not, however, a group of fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Rather, it was a domestic social protest mounted by ecological groups against the COP-21 ecological summit opening today in Paris.
The state of emergency bans all forms of public protest for three months, and police seized upon this standing ban to stage a brutal crackdown on a crowd of several thousand people. République Square, which had seen vigils for the victims of the November 13 attacks and official appeals for national unity, was filled with tear gas as police shot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters.
Citing acts of violence by a group of 80 masked protesters, police then proceeded to arrest 289 protesters, detaining 174.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/30/pers-n30.html
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