No policemen have been reported as seriously injured during the five months of weekly clashes with the Yellow Vests.
On the other hand, the latest official Interior Ministry figures list 2, 200 wounded demonstrators, 10 eyes permanently put out, 8,700 arrests, 1,796 convictions, 1, 428 teargas canisters fired, 4, 942 dispersion grenades fired, 13, 460 Flashballs (LBDs) fired.
Flashballs, manufactured in Switzerland, are listed as "sub-lethal military weapons" but when they cross the French border, they magically become crowd-control devices. They are extremely powerful and accurate at 50 yards, and the number head-wounds indicate that they have been deliberately aimed at demonstrators' heads, as have been tear-gas canisters and grenades.
Me'diapart's list counts 606 demonstrators wounded including one death, 5 hands ripped off, 23 blinded in one eye, 236 head wounds (including jaws ripped off) and 103 attacks on journalists. Among the wounded 464 were demonstrators, 39 minors, 22 bystanders, 61 journalists and 20 medics. [2]
Concerning the Black Block and other casseurs ("trashers") they are certainly guilty of property damage on a fairly significant scale, but have as far as I know not wounded, blinded or crippled any human beings. That, to me (but apparently not to the French media) is a significant difference. I have never eaten at Fouquet's restaurant, and I'm sure they have insurance.
My problem with the Black Block at Yellow Vest demonstrations is that they never get arrested or struck by flashballs. Go on YouTube and you can see dozens of videos of masked, black-clad guys with crowbars smashing banks and trashing stores in plain sight. No one ever stops them. Why?
A certain number of casseurs have been spotted (and videoed) as police provocateurs, infiltrating the demonstrations, smashing stuff, and then being exfiltrated through police lines. This is an old French police tactic designed to spoil the image of a demonstration and justify violent repression, but the whole truth is that Europe is full of angry young men, self-styled anarchists, deeply invested in fighting the establishment by smashing its symbols. They come in from all over Europe.
So the cops leave them alone and concentrate on their main mission: brutalizing the crowds of ordinary demonstrators to scare them off and stifle dissent. Moreover, the Black Block folks are more likely to kick the sh*t out of the cops who try to stop them than are high-school kids, parents with children, and old folks like me and Genevià �ve. I'd like the Black Block much more if they would fight the cops themselves, instead of using us as human shields while expressing their quite understandable rage while we get gassed and shot at.
"Libertycidal" LegislationThe new "anti-casseurs" laws that Macron is pushing through the legislature will legalize and set in stone for the future the repressive practices used against the Yellow Vests, making them permanently available to his successors (for example Marine LePen). They have nothing to do with actual casseurs (who are obviously breaking existing laws and need only to be apprehended under them) and everything to do with making it nearly impossible for ecologists, trade-unionists or Yellow Vests to demonstrate.
For example, if you are a small-town Yellow Vest and take the train to Paris on a Saturday, you are likely to be stopped several times between the station and the Champs Elyse'es. If you have in your backpack Vaseline, eye drops, ski goggles, a bicycle helmet, a face-scarf or God forbid a gasmask, you can be arrested, brought to summary trial, and convicted the very same day for being part of a "group organized for the purpose of destroying public order and obstructing the forces of order."
Of course if you insist on a real trial with lawyers and everything, they will gladly hold you over in jail, but if you're not at work on Monday you'll lose your job and meanwhile who is minding the kids? And if you eventually do get to demonstrate and the demonstration leads to property damage, you may also be made legally and financially responsible. You may also be placed on a list of dangerous people and barred from demonstrating again at the whim of the local Prefect.
The chilling prospect of turning these absurd police-state practices into law is what brought pacifists like Genevià �ve Legay out into the streets with the Yellow Vests. Interviewed in the hospital, where she is still in pain and recovering slowly from multiple injuries, she declared: "Today I am determined to carry on the fight. It is ever more necessary to do so when you see the anti-democratic drift of this government ["] The yellow Vests support me and I will continue supporting them. I am not going to stop fighting to defend our rights, as I have for 50 years, and to struggle against State repression whatever form it may take."
The Cat Is Out of the BagShe will not be alone. The League for the Rights of Man and more than 50 other civil liberties groups, religious associations, trade unions, civic associations and far-left parties have just called for a massive national demonstration for the right to demonstrate, along with the Yellow Vests this Saturday, April 13. I hope it will be massive.
The choice of Saturday is significant as an act of solidarity with the Yellow Vests, who alone have been defending the public's right to assemble in public places, and this at considerable personal risk. For 22 weeks, the Yellow Vests have been acting out this basic democratic right through their principled refusal to beg the police for special permission for citizens to gather in a public square or parade through the streets. Imagine "Occupy Wall St." happening all around the country, in cities and on traffic circles, on a weekly basis. All alone, the Yellow Vests have sustained thousands of injuries and thousands of arrests through this weekly act of civil disobedience, proclaiming the right to the city. Now, at last, they have recognition and allies.*
This new convergence of other groups, along with the new perspectives flowing from the Yellow Vests' Assembly of Assemblies, may mark a new phase in their long and lonely struggle against Macron's harsh, anti-democratic, neo-liberal regime in its implacable drive to wipe out the relative advantages in living standards, social services and personal liberties won by previous generations of French people in 1936 (the general strike), 1945 (the Liberation) and 1968 (the general strike and student uprising). Indeed, since 1789 (the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which enshrines the people's right to demonstrate grievances).
P.S. Meanwhile, the Algerian people, having suffered a century of French colonial rule, a long and bloody war for independence, and more than 60 years of corrupt police-state rule, are carrying on a similar struggle for dignity and democracy, filling the streets once a week (but on Friday, not Saturday) in so-far peaceful massive demonstrations. (The Montpellier Yellow Vests immediately voted their support.) The irony is that the Algerian police have held back on violence, whereas here in France, the level of state repression against the Yellow Vests reminds me of the oppressive atmosphere of police repression I experienced as a student in Paris during the Algerian War.
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