“The Minister of the Interior attacks the right to demonstrate”
“On 25 August 2022, in the torpor of summer, the Minister of the Interior sent the Mayors of the Kingdom a circular ‘relative à l’interdiction individuelle et préventive de manifestation’. This circular aims to authorise Mayors to impose, under certain conditions, an individual and preventive ban on demonstrating on persons described as ‘troublemakers’.”
“A few months ago, Mayor Close said he wanted a ‘law against rioters’. These words are misleading; he has, in fact, obtained a circular against demonstrators.”
[...]
“In reality, this circular targets not rioters but anyone likely to demonstrate, and the right to demonstrate in general.”
“There are many laws allowing those regarded as rioters to be punished, whether they have caused damage or committed violence. What is at issue here is banning from a demonstration those who, it is predicted, will cause public disorder.”
“The circular insists twice that individual preventive bans on demonstrating may be justified by intelligence from the police services. This is a far cry from actions whose reality has been established by a court decision. The ban is then entered in the general police database (the BNG).”
“In practice, this ‘intelligence’, which Mayors are likely to take up without critical distance, often consists of various pieces of information provided by any police officer who has interacted with you or looked you up on the internet, and who assesses your personality, your behaviour and your ideas. The officer in question may disagree with an article you have written, find you too critical of the police, disapprove of your ideas or what he believes to be your ideas, hold your positions against you from the negotiation of a demonstration route, or dislike you or your attitude for many other reasons.”
“The risk of some form of political profiling is obvious.”
[...]
“[...] In such a society, the first principle is no longer that of individual freedom, which can be limited only by way of exception, but that of the subjection of fundamental rights to the arbitrariness of the administration.”
“Finally, the context we are experiencing is no doubt not unrelated to the introduction of this possibility of preventively banning people from demonstrating. The multiplication and worsening of crises (economic and environmental as well as social and political) affecting ever larger sections of the population are leading and will lead to major movements of contestation and protest. Yet this circular offers mayors a new instrument capable of containing these various social movements. Placing this circular in this context seems fundamental to us in order to politicise what is at stake and not to stick to the caricatural opposition between ‘nice peaceful demonstrators’ and ‘nasty violent demonstrators’.”
“Olivier STEIN and Thomas MITEVOY, lawyers, Progress Lawyers Network”
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https://trends.levif.be
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©Alain-Coppens
