The arguments of the Paris police headquarters were too light in the eyes of the courts. The administrative court therefore decided on Friday to suspend the prefectural ban on a march against racism and Islamophobia planned for Sunday in Paris, considering that it represented “a serious and manifestly illegal attack on the freedom of demonstration”.
This is bad for the prefecture which had, very classically, justified this ban by “high risks of disturbances to public order”. A summary report was immediately filed by the organizing collective, which includes the NPA and the national observatory of police practices and violence.
An unconvincing argument
According to representatives of the prefecture, the organizers were notable for “failing to take into account the risks of excesses” and underestimating their security service. Among the slogans invoked by the demonstrators, there is in particular the fight against “police crimes against young people”. A demand “conducive to attracting components deliberately seeking clashes with the police, creating a real risk of disturbances to public order”, according to the prefecture in a decree published Thursday. The courts found that this was not the case.
The ban was therefore firmly contested by the organizers who reacted in a press release. “We therefore arrive at this situation through a formidable Kafkaesque operation: organizing a demonstration to denounce racism, Islamophobia and for the protection of all children becomes a violent provocation in the eyes of the French state and is prohibited from doing so. title “.