Captured on film in July, French police have shown themselves to be a disgrace to the law enforcement profession. African immigrants were forced to leave their council housing earlier in the month and had set up camp on the streets in the area. Women and children were the main occupants of the Parisian streets, with no where else to go, they stayed close to their friends and families. Many of the immigrants were there perfectly legally and had been living in France for more than a decade. Police arrived to move the campers along and the video, published on YouTube by French news site Mediapart, depicts the African families sitting peacefully on the pavement, arms linked together, being assaulted by the authorities.
Women were dragged away from their friends and families, babies ripped from their mothers' arms and wraps. One woman was pulled from the group by her legs, dragged over the ground on her back, where her baby was wrapped, she was pulled across her child, apparently squashing him into the ground. A pregnant woman is shown lying on the ground, her head perilously close to a concrete bollard. It is unclear whether she was injured or "playing dead" to make it more difficult to be moved, but the police were making a good go of shifting her.
I have never seen anything quite like this in my life. The brutality involved is shocking. To manhandle people in this fashion is bad enough but when you consider that it was women and children, who had done nothing more than attempt to sit it out when being forced to leave their homes, this is troubling indeed. I don't know if it is even worse to know that this did not take place in some obscure dictatorship, but right here in Europe, in Paris no less.
We live in troubling times indeed.
Here is the video, please be warned, this clip depicts police brutality upon women and children and viewers may find it distressing:
Women were dragged away from their friends and families, babies ripped from their mothers' arms and wraps. One woman was pulled from the group by her legs, dragged over the ground on her back, where her baby was wrapped, she was pulled across her child, apparently squashing him into the ground. A pregnant woman is shown lying on the ground, her head perilously close to a concrete bollard. It is unclear whether she was injured or "playing dead" to make it more difficult to be moved, but the police were making a good go of shifting her.
I have never seen anything quite like this in my life. The brutality involved is shocking. To manhandle people in this fashion is bad enough but when you consider that it was women and children, who had done nothing more than attempt to sit it out when being forced to leave their homes, this is troubling indeed. I don't know if it is even worse to know that this did not take place in some obscure dictatorship, but right here in Europe, in Paris no less.
We live in troubling times indeed.
Here is the video, please be warned, this clip depicts police brutality upon women and children and viewers may find it distressing:
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