“This is the first time that I have been targeted and assaulted in a demonstration. » Paul Boyer is a freelance journalist, he is used to covering social movements in France and abroad. After the demonstration of the inter-union Thursday, March 23, in the evening, Paul Boyer was doing his job when he was clubbed by “a Brav-M policeman”, the Motorized Violent Action Repression Brigade. He ends the evening in the emergency room: his left hand is fractured, his skull is slightly open and two weeks of ITT are prescribed for him.
Around 9 p.m., Paul Boyer is on Boulevard Beaumarchais, between Place de la Bastille and Place de la Répulique, interviewing a protester. Then ” Everything happened so fast “, tells the reporter to “l’Obs”:
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“A dozen Brav bikers came at full speed in the street, they got off the motorcycles and started typing in the crowd. I had time to see them coming, they were about 15 meters away. I showed my press card shouting “Press”. »
Despite this, one of the police officers hit him behind the head with a truncheon and two more on the face. “I managed to protect my face with my left hand, that’s how it broke”continues Paul Boyer, who specifies that he filed a complaint this Friday morning on the IGPN site.
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“It’s methodical among the police”
Paul Boyer is not the only journalist to have been targeted by the police. Since March 16, Reporters Without Borders has recorded a “upsurge” reports of police violence against journalists. A first for two years, according to Pauline Adès-Mével, spokesperson for the NGO. RSF gives the example of journalist Raphaël Klesser, caught in a trap on March 20, then abusively placed in police custody while doing his job; or even that of the photojournalist Angeline Desdevises, tackled to the ground by two CRS, in Rennes, on March 16.
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Valentin Feuillette, freelance journalist, goes to work at the editorial office of “Figaro” on the Grands Boulevards, Thursday, March 23. The streets being completely blocked, he advances towards some CRS and shows them his press card, his identity card and his badge of the “Figaro” to be able to pass. “I saw a gesture, that he put his hand in his pocket so I shifted to turn my face. He took out the tear gas canister, he told me “get the hell out of here, son of a bitch, if you think you’re with us” and he sprinkled my face. There are two of his colleagues who said “stop, don’t do that” and then they let me through,” he tells “l’Obs”.
“We are always intimidated, it’s methodical among the police”, testifies Ricardo Parreira, freelance journalist in Montpellier, who covers social movements. It describes constant threats and intimidation. In a video posted on social networks, we see the police advancing in front of him, while he steps back and chants “It’s the press, it’s the press”. The journalist and his colleagues are finally targeted with an LBD.
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« Our presence is essential”
Faced with these repeated attacks, RSF is concerned. THE “abusive measures and unjustified police custody are attacks on democracy, they are attacks on freedom of the press and this is extremely worrying”, Pauline Adès-Mével is alarmed. Before adding:
“Today, the climate is worrying. »
“If we are no longer there, there are no more reports. Our presence is essential in a demonstration to bring up the testimonies of the demonstrators “recalls Paul Boyer. Even if the reporter sees that “the forces of order are exhausted”, he estimates that ” it is part of their job to know how to distinguish dangerous individuals from journalists and to know how to keep their cool”.
For its part, Reporters Without Borders questioned the Minister of the Interior on “this new series of violence and abusive police measures”. The NGO demands that the rights of journalists be respected and that they be protected in accordance with the national law enforcement plan. She also recalls that “the absence of prior declarations of the protest rallies in no way excuses all the arbitrary obstacles to the reporters who covered these demonstrations and the attacks”.
