France: Police repression of CPE protest movement
01 May 2006
In May 2006, a student lawyers' collective (
Collectif Assistance Juridique) produced a report that details significant aspects of the police repression of demonstrators who opposed the so-called law on equal opportunities, particularly the introduction of the
contrat de première embouche (CPE, first employment contract, applicable to people under 26). The movement against this law became active in early February, drawing hundreds of thousands of marchers in over 200 cities on 7 March 2006, with violent incidents first occurring during the expulsion of occupants from Sorbonne University in Paris a few days later. One million reportedly demonstrated on 18 March, when clashes took place in Paris. The movement continued to gather steam, with between one and three million people demonstrating on 28 March and 4 April and violent incidents occurring in several cities.
Based on testimonies and the monitoring of legal proceedings that followed the setting up of a legal support service by the collective, the report highlights a number of procedural irregularities and abuses as it reviews events that took place between February and May 2006. These are broken up into sections on the stopping of protesters, the period when they were held in custody (garde à vue) and identified, and the subsequent judicial process and imposition of penal and administrative punishment. It also assesses the role of the media and presents the introduction of an amnesty as "indispensable". The starting point for the report is the:
objective observation that French law neither makes a political claim a cause for stopping [someone] nor an aggravating circumstance for an offence, this report seeks to provide an account of the policing and judicial reality experienced by the movement to oppose the law on equal opportunities.
Holding protesters and "quotas"
With regards to the initial stopping and holding of demonstrators, the report notes providing testimonies, that it was often the people who stayed on longer, rather than the ones involved in disturbances, who were stopped following demonstrations. It suggests that the number of arrests was subject to a sort of "quota" that was deemed to be necessary in order to convince the media that the police had been doing their job. One man who was arrested in Paris claims that a policeman told him that, "We need some figures, and you are the quota of vandals* for the day". Moreover, the report also highlights the use of "pre-emptive controls" on metro and railway lines serving suburban towns. These were justified as a means of dissuasion and to stop criminals by the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who drew a link between the anti-CPE demonstrations and disturbances in the French suburbs last November:
There are some vandals who come from a certain number of neighbourhoods and who are the same [people] as the rioters from last November, that is, they come to break things, they come to carry out aggressions, they come to steal, that's undeniable.
The report notes that this approach both contravenes the presumption of innocence and is based on racial and social criteria, thus leading to the denial of the right for students from the suburbs to express their political convictions in a demonstration like ordinary French citizens can. In the event, these checks led to tensions in certain suburban towns (Saint Denis, Savigny sur Orge), sometimes resulting in confrontations and more people being stopped or held.
According to justice ministry figures, around 4,350 people were stopped in relation to the demonstrations, and the highest figures came from large cities, although protesters in smaller towns also experienced police repression. In spite of the same reason being repeatedly mooted to justify someone being stopped, that is, "carrying out violent acts", the people held were seldom asked about this charge, and were often released following identification or sent b