We stand with the French people in the face of violent crackdowns on popular protest and the criminalisation of dissent by Emmanuel Macron’s government.

The French people have been striking and protesting against Macron’s government due to his cuts to their pension system, following a long string of neoliberal reforms that have been eroding living standards for workers in France for years. Macron’s pension cuts are opposed by the vast majority of the French people and are so unpopular Macron felt it necessary to bypass parliament to implement them. Over the course of these protests, the French police have acted with extreme violence against participants and made use of military grade equipment against citizens, such as plastic grenades. The French government has encouraged this approach by the police and its spokespeople have attempted to legitimise the police violence by creating a false narrative in the media that the popular protests are led by ‘cop killers’. 

Last weekend, the French government and the police chose to make an example of environmental protesters campaigning against the privatisation of public water supplies in mega reservoirs to try to further this narrative. Government spokespeople named these environmental protestors as the same ‘cop killers’ who were leading the pension protests. When it came to the protest, police were deployed in large numbers and acted with extreme violence towards protestors, resulting in over 200 protestors suffering serious injuries, 40 protestors being physically disfigured, such as losing eyes, and two protestors being nearly killed. These two protestors are currently in a coma in a life or death situation. The police also refused to allow medical professionals access to treat the injured. Since the environmental protest last weekend, the French interior minister has declared he intends to proscribe and criminalise the environmental campaign group organising the protest.

The extreme violence of the police and the criminalisation by the interior minister are clearly aimed at suppressing the movement against the pension cuts. This is an unacceptable attack on the democratic freedoms and human rights of French citizens. We stand with the French people and support the victory of the movements against Macron’s pension cuts and against his privatisation of water.

Signed,

Peter Mertens, General Secretary, Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), Belgium

Raoul Hedebouw, President, Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), Belgium

Marc Botenga, Member of the European Parliament, Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), Belgium

Jeremy Corbyn, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

John McDonnell, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

Niki Ashton, Member of Parliament for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, Canada

Ammar Ali Jan, Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement, Pakistan

Yanis Varoufakis, Member of Hellenic Parliament, Greece

Janine Wissler, Member of the Bundestag; Co-chair of Die Linke, Germany

Nilab Ahmadi, City Council Member of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Phil Clarke, Vice President of the National Education Union, United Kingdom

Henry Chango Lopez, General Secretary, Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, United Kingdom

Matt Buckley, Chair of United Tech and Allied Workers, United Kingdom

Nadia Whitome, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

Bell Ribeiro Addy, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

Ian Byrne, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

Zarah Sultana, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

John Hendy, Member of the House of Lords, United Kingdom

Claudia Webbe, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom

Photo: Twitter