As the Financial Times has reported the French state under Emmanuel Macron has been accused of “strengthening security and repression” not only to tackle terrorist threats but also to deal with anti-government gilets jaunes protesters and migrants. In his 2018 annual report released on Tuesday, Jacques Toubon, the official rights defender or national ombudsman, complained of an unprecedented number of preventive arrests that appeared to be an extension of the anti-terror state of emergency imposed in 2015 and supposedly ended in 2017.

A review of part of this report could disclose human rights violations in France during the protests of last weeks: “In France, along with the decline of public services, a policy of strengthened security and repression has taken root in the face of the terrorist threat, social troubles and fears about an immigration crisis.”

The French authorities’ rash response to this report shows that they do not have the quarreling responses to these allegations. Christophe Castaner, Macron’s interior minister, immediately rejected the accusations. “For weeks, every Saturday, our security forces have been attacked,” he said. “You have to ask a simple question: ‘Do our security forces have the right to defend themselves in the face of the ultra-violence of some demonstrators?’”

But there is evidence that the French Minister of the Interior and other French authorities have no justification for them. The UN and the Council of Europe have condemned what they saw as the disproportionate use of force against demonstrators, in particular the firing of more than 13,000 rounds of rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters.

Even some of the president’s own party members in the National Assembly abstained from a vote on “anti-wreckers” legislation that is set to become law shortly. It would allow officials to ban individuals from demonstrating and forbid protesters from obscuring their faces to avoid identification.

Finally, the French authorities and the president should accept their accusations of repression of the French protesters. Without a doubt, under such circumstances, French authorities can no longer lie to their country as a guardian of democracy and freedom.

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 Iranian students, journalists and people from different walks of life are holding a demonstration in front of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which handles the US consular affairs in Iran, to protest the illegal detention of a US-born anchor working for Iran’s Press TV by the US authorities.

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