French Police Face Scrutiny for Heavy Hand During Pension Protests - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/world/europe/france-police-pension-protests.html
“I would gladly have broken your legs.”
That’s what a French police officer told Souleyman Adoum Souleyman, a Chadian student who had just been arrested during a nighttime protest in Paris last month against the government’s unpopular pension overhaul. A minute later, another officer ordered Mr. Souleyman, the only Black person among the people rounded up, to “wipe that smile off your face” before slapping him.
Mr. Souleyman was eventually released without any charges. But the officers’ threats and humiliations were recorded in an audio clip that has reignited a fierce debate about police brutality in France.
The audio recording — which was revealed by French news outlets a few days after the arrest, and which The New York Times obtained and authenticated — has struck a chord in France after a recent history of rough and sometimes discriminatory police tactics.
It has also highlighted what lawyers for those arrested and some judges see as a broader trend of abusive arrests aimed at deterring the demonstrators, who have taken to the streets for weeks against the overhaul of the pension system, which raised the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62. Unions have called for more protests on Thursday, on the eve of a key ruling by France’s Constitutional Council, which could strike down part or all of the pension law.