Not Just in America: French Authorities Cover for Abusive Police Too

Tue, 10/06/2015

thiscantbehappening.net Editor’s Note:

This article from Ferguson In Paris, an anti-police brutality group in France, does not contain a byline. The reason for this is because members of that group say they must maintain anonymity as much as possible remain to avoid abusive retaliation from authorities and others in France. “We publish under the name of the organization because of fierce repression regarding activists dealing with police brutality,” explained a Ferguson In Paris member during a recent email exchange with ThisCan’tBeHappening.net. The claimed support by French government authorities and other for freedom of speech following the fatal shootings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office last January 2015 apparently do not extend to French activists opposed to brutality by French police. (Ferguson In Paris, an organization that fights against police brutality and racism/discrimination in France, works in solidarity with anti-brutality groups in the United States.)
AN UGLY UNDERSIDE OF FRANCE: RAMPANT POLICE BRUTALITY
In 2005, the human rights monitoring organization Amnesty International published a report titled: “France: The search for justice.” That Amnesty report examined allegations of serious human rights violations by law enforcement officials across France between 1991 and 2005. Those human rights violations by law enforcers included unlawful killings, excessive use of force, torture, and other mistreatment. Racist abuse was reported in many cases examined by Amnesty and racist motivation appeared to be a factor in many more. As that report noted, the persistent targets of police abuse in France are “foreign nationals or French nationals of foreign origin.”

On the basis of the evidence examined, Amnesty International concluded that a pattern of de facto impunity existed with regard to police and other law enforcement officials in France. Failures by French officials “to address” police abuses have created a “climate of effective impunity for law enforcement officers,” the report stated.

France: A Message From the Dispossessed

[A long, drawn-out racist and xenophobic campaign in Europe, rooted in values that once marked the French colonial assault and occupation of Algeria, has re-intensified in recent months with neo-Nazi power moves and anti-migrant pograms and massive police round-ups, specifically but not exclusively aimed at Arab and African migrants and long-term residents alike.  A media campaign, both racist and Islamophobic, has heralded every new attack, and the hate-filled, quasi-satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper has been a key “culture-building” instrument for this.  Recent cartoons debasing Islam have clearly had openly provocative intentions, and with the enraged revenge attacks on the newspaper, the cartoon-provocateurs succeeded in further xenophobic expression: “Je Suis Charlie” meaning, among other things, “Je Suis Racist” and “Je Suis Xenophobe”.  Further attacks on the poorest migrants, Arab and African workers, are already underway.  The following article gives some background on all this. — Frontlines ed.]

By Chris Hedges, January 11, 2015

The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendor and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury.

Across Europe, Police Stalking, Brutalizing, Jailing Migrants

Amid Racist Raids&Police Violence Against Poor Migrants, Thousands Protest Fortress Europe’s Concentration Camps

10/19/2014

“No human is illegal”, thousands protest to close down detention center for migrants and refugees in Barcelona. via @Comite1desembre

It’s been almost a week since 20,000 police have started to hunt down poor migrants in Europe, and proof emerge that these raids are racist actions against refugees. Cops invade transportation means or other public place and always check everyone “who isn’t white”, as witnesses report.

Operation Mos Maiorum is indeed a public-funded police operation of stigmatization, racist discrimination, and criminalization of poor migrants. Activists all over Europe are resisting by informing migrants and refugees how to avoid raids, and how to alert others; see below.

Police and state terror against migrants has been again documented in Spain: @PRODEINORG has filmed police clubbing migrants who try to jump Meila border. It is not known how many migrants have been killed by police at this border, but previously proof of these crimes were made public without any stirring any action or response against the killer cops.