French anti-terrorism measures used against protesters, Digi Mart USA News: Since the protests of October 24, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has defended the controversial use of residence orders against activists. The measures are being applied to people involved in a social movement, according to the publisher’s report.
On Wednesday, November 4, magistrates, lawyers, unions and NGOs denounced what they described as an authoritarian shift and a distortion of the rule of law aimed at silencing “any dissenting voice” since the start of the protest movement involving high school students and the yellow vests. The groups spoke at a press conference in Paris ahead of a new round of demonstrations planned for Thursday.
Participating organizations, including the Syndicat de la magistrature, the Syndicat des avocats de France and the Ligue des droits de l’homme, said the state is deploying an “administrative arsenal” to prevent people from demonstrating in the street. They pointed to protest bans, marches pushed outside city centers and police violence as signs that the right to demonstrate freely and safely may be under threat.
According to the Interior Ministry, about one hundred people have been targeted since the weekend of October 24 by a MICAS, an acronym for “individual measures of administrative control and surveillance.” These measures can impose constraints on a person considered to pose a terrorist risk. Citizens who wanted to demonstrate have recently been placed under residence orders under an anti-terrorism law passed nearly ten years ago.
The tool was created in 2017 through the French law strengthening domestic security and the fight against terrorism (SILT). The publisher reports that it is now being used in the context of a social movement, a shift criticized by lawyer Aïnoha Pascual, who represents affected individuals, and studied for several years by Nicolas Klausser, a jurist and researcher at the CNRS.
The publisher’s article was not independently verified.
