French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Wednesday hit back at claims that police are too tough on protesters, telling a parliamentary committee that ultra-left groups were to blame for clashes with environmental activists and people marching against pension reform.
While authorities say police are on hand to ensure citizens can protest peacefully, rights advocates accuse officers of overstepping this mission when using their batons against demonstrators or when firing tear gas.
Darmanin, who is France’s chief of police, denied accusations from leftwing opposition MPs that police and gendarmes were guilty of a disproportionate use of force.
“Protests and policing are not the problem. The problem is the urban guerrillas, the urban violence,” he said, adding that anti pension reform protests on 16 and 23 March in particular had seen a strong surge of ultra-left groups seeking to infiltrate the movement.
“If I were provocative, I would say they wanted to take the movement hostage,” Darmanin added.
Moves by the government to force the pensions legislation through parliament without a vote, he said, had also resulted in an uptick of violence.
'European problem'
Infiltration of democratic protests by the ultra left was not a problem exclusive to France, the Interior Minister argued.
“It's obviously an international issue," Darmanin said as he presented a slideshow to the committee that included images of similar clashes between police and protesters elsewhere in Europe.
Ultra-left anarchists had been “extremely present” since the beginning of the 2000s and were now “coming back to the fore", he said.
They were at protests against the Sivens dam in 2014, Darmanin said, adding they were also involved in a zone set up by activists to protect land in Brittany where the government wanted to build an airport.
Darmanin blamed the same ultra-left groups for violence between security forces and environmental campaigners last month in Sainte-Soline, in western France, where dozens of people were injured.
Four complaints have been filed against the police, the prosecutor of Rennes said on Tuesday.
The family of one activist, still in a critical condition, filed a complaint for “attempted murder” and “willful obstruction of the arrival of help”.
The activists were protesting against the construction of reservoirs for the agricultural industry.
