three questions about the rallies against the pension reform

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Spontaneous demonstrations have taken place every day in France since the use of 49.3 by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to push through the pension reform on Thursday March 16. Images of demonstrators, traps, arrests circulate on social networks and raise many questions. franceinfo takes stock of the right to demonstrate spontaneously, on the “trap” technique used by the police and on the presence of CRS equipped with HK G36 assault rifles on the sidelines of the processions.

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1Do we have the right to participate in a spontaneous demonstration?

Yes. In France, the right to demonstrate is guaranteed by the Declaration of Human Rights and has the value of constitutionality. We have the right to demonstrate in two scenarios: if the demonstration has not been declared to the prefecture or the town hall, what is commonly called a wild or spontaneous demonstration – the Court of Cassation has ratified this right in July 2021 – and whether the protest has been declared and not banned. You should know that a demonstration does not need to be authorized. A right to demonstrate that many Internet users wanted to remember on social networks.

On the other hand, since 2019 and the movement of “yellow vests”, participating in a demonstration that has been banned is not authorized and is punishable by a fourth class fine of 750 euros maximum.

The law makes a clear difference between participants and organizers of demonstrations. The latter are obliged to declare their demonstration to the authorities. If they don’t, they risk being sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 7,500 euros. They risk being condemned also if they declare a demonstration, that it is prohibited, but that they organize it nevertheless in spite of the prohibition. In summary, we have the right to participate in a spontaneous demonstration but not to organize it.

Nevertheless, in all cases, whether the demonstration is spontaneous, declared or prohibited, the participants risk being confronted with the police because they may consider that it is no longer a question of a peaceful gathering. , but of a crowd. The Penal Code states that “constitutes a crowd any gathering of people on the public highway or in a public place likely to disturb public order” (article 431-3). A broad definition denounced by the Observatory of Freedoms and Police Practices in a blog post on Mediapart. “But when can we consider that a demonstration has become a crowd?”, he asks himself. Participation in a crowd is one of the regular reasons for the detention of demonstrators arrested in recent days, particularly in Paris, the majority of whom are released without any prosecution.

2Do the police have the right to “nasser” the demonstrators?

Yes and no. The “trap” is a technique for maintaining order which consists of surrounding demonstrators in order to be able to check and arrest them. In 2021, the Council of State removed this technique from the order maintenance plan of the Ministry of the Interior, considering that the conditions under which this technique could be used were not precise enough. It is by virtue of this decision that many people believe that encirclement is prohibited, such as the decorator Valérie Damidot or the account “Vilain syndicaliste”.

Nevertheless, a few months after the opinion of the Council of State, in December 2021, the ministry published a new national law enforcement plan which reintroduced the “trap” technique by adding conditions of use: “The encirclement of a group of demonstrators may be used to prevent or put an end to serious and imminent violence against persons and property. This encirclement must, as soon as the circumstances of public order permit, systematically spare a controlled exit point for these people. Encirclement can only be implemented for a strictly necessary and proportionate period” (p. 25).

But that remains too vague, for the Paris Observatory of Public Liberties, the League of Human Rights and the Syndicate of Lawyers of France. A few days after the publication of this diagram, they signed a press release to denounce a “normalization of the abusive use of traps”. “The SNMO thus authorizes the surrounding of a demonstration to prevent damage to property. This criterion is sufficiently broad and imprecise to allow the preventive surrounding of any demonstration”, they lamented. This new policing scheme has not been challenged since, so the police can “nasser”. The demonstrators arrested and prosecuted will then have to try to prove that the conditions of the trap were not met.

3Was a CRS armed with an HK G36 assault rifle during a demonstration in Nantes?

The photo of a CRS armed with an HK GR36 assault rifle is circulating on social networks. It was originally posted by the activist account “Counter attack”formerly “Nantes Révoltée”, who wrote on Twitter: “The HK G36 is an assault rifle from the firm Heckler and Koch, caliber 5.56 mm. The French police have been equipped with it in the name of anti-terrorism. It fires up to 750 rounds per minute. Here, brandished by an outdated CRS, in the heart of Nantes, between demonstrators and onlookers.”

The close-up photo cannot be authenticated via a simple reverse search on the Internet. We have contacted several police sources and they deny the activists’ version. On the one hand, they confirm that the photo is true: this CRS was well equipped with an HK G36 last Saturday in Nantes. But on the other hand, they affirm that the interpretation which is made of it by the militant account is wrong. This CRS was not there to maintain order during the demonstration, but to secure the CRS, and in particular their vehicles, in the event of a terrorist attack. He stayed away from the demonstrators and never intervened.

“The staff photographed is the company armourer who is closest to the unit commander. This group is at the rear of the CRS device and does not participate in any law enforcement operations”, explains the Information and Communication Service of the National Police (Sicop) to franceinfo. The position of his finger shows that he is in a safe position, which prevents accidental shots.

Sicop ensures that CRS equipped with HK G36s have been regularly deployed on the sidelines of demonstrations since the 2015 attacks and the expansion of the vigipirate system, as the Minister of the Interior explained to a deputy in 2017. “It intervenes within the framework of the permanent instructions of the Ministry of the Interior on the subject of the protean terrorist threat. In this case, it cannot be excluded that on the occasion of a large gathering of citizens a terrorist action is undertaken against the police or demonstrators. It is in this context that the unit command can therefore use this weapon in order to protect citizens and put an end to the threat”details the Sicop.

The deployment of CRS authorized to wear HK G36s had already been reported during a demonstration of “yellow vests” in January 2019, under the fight against terrorism. But, according to a note from the head of the CRS that Mediapart had been able to consult, this equipment took into account the “violence observed against the police” during the movement’s previous days of action. Four years later, a police source assures franceinfo that things are different today, that it is only the vigipirate device.


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