The following videos show two separate incidents of police brutality in France during last weekend’s Yellow Vest demonstrations. Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.
WARNING: Both these videos, but particularly the first one, may be disturbing to sensitive viewers, who are advised to skip them and simply read the transcripts.
The first video was recorded during a Yellow Vest demonstration in the city of Nantes in Brittany. The protest was close to a public park where a “fun fair” for children was taking place. The police shot gas (presumably tear gas) at the demonstrators, and inadvertently gassed the children on a merry-go-round. Towards the end of this clip you can see people helping a little girl who was incapacitated by the gas:
The second video records events at a Burger King during the demonstration. The exact location in France is not clear. In it you see several young people trapped at the back of the restaurant, lying helplessly on the floor while riot police beat them with batons:
Video transcript #1:
| 00:00 | Eh, there’s a fun fair, right here. | |
| 00:12 | They [the police] are gassing children who are in merry-go-rounds! | |
| 00:16 | They are gassing children who are in merry-go-rounds! Please! | |
| 00:20 | Look, look at this scandal! We were about to leave and they are gassing children! | |
| 00:24 | No, other than that I don’t care. This is sick! Share, please! | |
| 00:28 | Look what’s going on in Nantes. There’s a fair. There are children everywhere. | |
| 00:32 | And they [the police] are gassing everything! | |
| 00:37 | The children and all! | |
| 00:41 | Oh my God, oh my God! | |
| 00:45 | Bastards, bastards, bastards! That you would do that to children! | |
| 00:49 | Oh là, là, they’re screaming! | |
| 00:53 | They’re screaming, the children! We have to help them! | |
| 00:57 | [unintelligible] | |
| 01:01 | Oh, damn! | |
| 01:05 | Calm down, calm down, you have to swallow this. It will help you. | |
| 01:10 | It will remove the burning sensation from your mouth. | |
| 01:14 | Calm down, voilà, it’s OK. | |
| 01:18 | Spit, yes, spit it out! | |
| 01:22 | Don’t worry, spit it out! [unintelligible] | |
| 01:26 | Those are the effects of the gas. | |
| 01:30 | Listen, we are here, look. |
Video transcript #2:
| 00:00 | Manon and Maxime | |
| 00:04 | are in the back of the restaurant next to the bar. And there Max, | |
| 00:08 | in order to protect me, covers me with his body. And right away we can feel the blows. | |
| 00:12 | They are hitting us. | |
| 00:16 | A young man | |
| 00:20 | on the floor is also being beaten with batons. | |
| 00:25 | In this recording he gets thirteen blows. | |
| 00:29 | The commander | |
| 00:33 | of the company [of the police] thought that vandals were inside. | |
| 00:37 | According to several CRS [urban police] | |
| 00:41 | who were present during the intervention, he told his men before entering: | |
| 00:45 | Bash them! | |
| 00:50 | One of his officers even heard him saying essentially: | |
| 00:54 | Take them out of there! Give them a beating! | |
| 00:58 | When called on the phone the chief of the company didn’t want to | |
| 01:02 | talk. —I cannot talk to you. | |
| 01:06 | The court will determine if it’s true. | |
| 01:11 | For the leadership, the action of those CRS is a sensitive question. | |
| 01:15 | But confronted with those pictures, | |
| 01:19 | the colonel of the gendarmes Di Méo prefers to break the silence. | |
| 01:23 | It is police violence. Yes, there is police violence, unfortunately. | |
| 01:27 | Unfortunately, when the protesters talk about police violence, | |
| 01:31 | [and] when I see it, I have to agree with them. | |
| 01:36 | Yes, there is police violence and there we have police violence. |
It’s pretty obvious the French government sees the yellow vest movement as a mortal threat to its remaining in power. And like all socialists, power is everything.
I’m reminded of an observation that when the US troops in World War I occupied Germany, they found themselves having much more in common with the Germans than with the French, their actual allies. Keeping in mind the likelihood that the German general staff likely provided crucial help to the Young Turk military in massacring Armenians, one can speculate things would have worked out far better had the US stayed out of World War I altogether, and left the allies and Germans to work out their own peace accords once they wore themselves out with no clear victory.
Regarding the French police, my claim is still they can be infiltrated and used as an extremely good source of intelligence, and that although the provocations are great, the best strategy by far would be to avoid violent actions towards the police and military.
Ronald B., it’s funny you mention WWI. My grandfather was a US Army artilleryman in France; shortly after the Armistice, he was stationed in Germany for a brief time. He stated exactly what you said about the Germans vs. the French; he easily preferred the Germans over the French, whom he despised after saving their country. Odd, but true. Or maybe not so odd; I can’t help but think that as much as we hated the Nazis, the fact that the Soviets were our “Allies” must have rubbed the US Military raw. Patton certainly was, and maybe paid for it with his life. Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.
Thank you.
Regarding the Soviets as allies, it is well to remember the incident recounted in Diana West’s book “American Betrayal” that several thousand US GIs were imprisoned in Soviet prisoner camps. The US Army knew about the camps, and were in easy reach of them. They were ordered by the US command to ignore the situation, and the GIs imprisoned by our “allies” were never heard from again.
Note that this happened after Germany’s defeat, so even the reasoning that the USSR had to be kept in the war at all costs was not operative then.
Chers Gilets Jaunes,
C’est ta tournée…
plus d’euro-cide!
plus d’euro-cide!
plus d’euro-cide!
~ Comité pour les tribunaux internationaux de l’eurocide