31/10/2024

France - police violence: More on the case of Cédric Chouviat


 

Cédric Chouviat's death: Paris prosecutors are calling for the three officers to be tried


The Paris prosecutor's office has requested a trial for involuntary manslaughter against three police officers accused of having unintentionally caused the death of delivery man Cédric Chouviat, in 2020.  


Bittersweet news in this case of police brutality...

The French public prosecutor requested on Tuesday a trial before the criminal court for these three civil servants still in office, according to a source close to the case, confirming information from the website Mediapart.

They are now aged 28, 33 and 38.

A fourth officer, a policewoman, placed under the more favourable status of assisted witness, escaped prosecution.

They are accused of involuntary manslaughter in the case of the death of Cédric Chouviat, who died during a tense police arrest in January 2020, while repeating "I'm suffocating"...

It is now up to the investigating judge to decide whether or not to send the police officers to trial.

Emblematic case

Chouviat was a 42-year-old father, and was pinned to the ground in Paris with his motorcycle helmet on his head during a police check, causing him to faint.

According to the indictments, the delivery man was "prevented from freeing himself and then handcuffed behind his back for a minute and a half, without the slightest reaction or check of his integrity by the police officers under investigation.

His up and down leg movements were confirmed by the use of films taken by witnesses.

He was later hospitalised in a critical condition, and declared dead two days later, on 5 January.

The case progressively became emblematic of police violence in France, following revelations from the forensic examination. It showed that, when he was put on the ground and handcuffed by the police, Chouviat said "I'm suffocating" nine times in thirteen seconds, before fainting.

His pleas were similar to the ones of George Floyd, the African-American man who was suffocated in May 2020 by a white police officer in Minneapolis, a tragedy that sparked a huge wave of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.  


Investigations

Throughout the investigation, the police officers claimed they had believed that Chouviat was "continuously rebelling" against his arrest, they said.

"If we had heard the expression 'I'm suffocating' even once, "we would have stopped," one of the certified in July 2020 before the investigating judge.

Witnesses, on the contrary, interpreted these signs as ones of distress.

Parts of the scene were filmed, showing the police officers continuing their action despite Chouviat's distress.

They were however trained in spotting warning signals, according to the investigators.

For the family's lawyers, "a trial is necessary", but not as requested by the prosecution.

The qualification of involuntary manslaughter is, in this case, "a legal nonsense because it does not reflect the reality of the voluntary nature of the violence suffered", lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth told the media.

"A strangulation key is in principle voluntary", added Arié Alimi, another lawyer of the family. "If the judge retains the qualification of involuntary manslaughter, the risk of acquittal is very high", he warned.

These accusations are contested by the policemen's lawyers.



French student arrested in Tunisia

 

Aix-Marseille university demands the release of a French student, arrested in Tunisia


French PhD student Victor Dupont has been detained in Tunisia on breach of state security charges for at least 12 days, reports said this Thursday.  French authorities are trying to negotiate his release, the director of his research lab said.

"This is an attack on academic freedom," Vincent Geisser, director of the French Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds at Aix-Marseille University (Iremam), told press agencies.

Victor Dupont, 27, was arrested just before midday on 19 October at his home in a suburb of Tunis along with three friends visiting from France.

He was in Tunisia to conduct sociological research on 2011 protesters.

One of his friends, Edouard Matalon, a Paris-based librarian, was also arrested but released the same day after questioning.

According to Matalon, another of their friends, who is of French-Tunisian nationality, also remains in custody on the same charges.

The family of the student and his university supervisors had until now been trying to negotiate, and kept quiet about his case.

His parents finally travelled to Tunis on 28 October, according to media reports, to meet the French Ambassador and advocate for this case.

Geisser confirmed to RFI that the family had now set up a support committee to demand his release.

Neither Tunisian or French authorities were immediately available for comments. 

'Exceptional' measures

Dupont "was detained by Tunisian police on Saturday 19 October, taken to an interrogation centre, placed in custody, and the same day brought before a military judge," Geisser said in a press release, calling the last measure "exceptional" for a French student.

Dupont hoped his interviews would provide material for a paper on the social and career paths of "people who might have been active during the 2011 revolution" that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, according to Geisser.

He started his PhD in 2022. 

"It is not a political topic linked to dissidents or opponents or a security topic, but a typical sociology topic," Geisser added, calling for his student to be released.

Weakened human rights and liberties

Tunisians recently voted in a presidential election after a campaign qualified by the United Nations as troubled, marred by a crackdown on the opposition, independent activists and journalists.

Amnesty International's research has then shown that there is a significant rollback of human rights in Tunisia, especially in the last couple of years.

President Kais Saied was re-elected with more than 90 percent of votes earlier this month, three years after he made a sweeping power grab in the country.

Rights groups fear Saied will tighten his grip on this democracy, considered the only one to have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring protests.


30/10/2024

On atrocities in Gaza, interview with the UN's Francesca Albanese, as she releases a new report

 


'Gaza absolutely needs a ceasefire,' says the UN's Francesca Albanese


In the past days, UN agencies UNRWA, Unicef and UNOCHA have warned about unprecedented atrocities in northern Gaza and most of the Palestinian territories. As Francesca Albanese, the UN rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian territories, releases a new report, I asked her how to support humanitarian and UN work in Gaza, and how the region can escape a now region-wide conflict between Israel and its neighbours, following Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023. 




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By Melissa Chemam

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Humanitarian and international law have been undermined by a year of war against civilians in Gaza, according to the UN rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.

On 20 October, James Elder, spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), condemned the continued attacks on civilians after Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahiya killed dozens.

The war is affecting the population in a 'horrific way', he added.

More than 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing extremely critical levels of hunger, according to the UN. Seventy percent of crop fields and livelihoods have been destroyed during the Israeli military offensive.

The war, which has claimed 42,000 lives and left hundreds of thousands wounded, has also spread to the West Bank and Lebanon. Civilians as well as UN peacekeepers have been targeted by Israel's forces.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament has also approved a controversial bill to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), considered a lifeline for Gaza, from operating on Israeli territory.

The agency has condemned the Israeli parliament’s decision, calling the move “outrageous”.

UN leaders have called for a ceasefire and denounced starvation, mass displacements, atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity, like the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk.

In an op-ed published in The New York Review of Books released on 17 October, Human Rights Watch’s Programme Director Sari Bashi also detailed how the Israeli military’s actions in northern Gaza repeatedly risk the war crimes of forced displacement and using starvation as a weapon of war.

To discuss the implication on human rights and humanitarian work in Gaza but also beyond, this week, RFI spoke to Francesca Albanese, the UN rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian territories, for the International Report.

This week, Albanese has released her latest report on the situation in Gaza and all the the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, before presenting it in front of the UN General Assembly.

Albanese discussed with me the level of suffering, the role and failures of the United Nations and the international community, and underlined the urgency of securing a ceasefire.

"I've used the word catastrophe for the first time back in October 2023," Albanese told RFI, "when Israel had killed 8000, 6000 people in the first weeks of the conflict and destroyed the entire neighbourhoods, bakeries, churches, and targeted UN buildings and university."

"This is not the way wars are conducted," she added. "Israel occupies that land according to the International Court of Justice, unlawfully. So Israel occupies unlawfully a territory oppressing its people, who of course, retaliate. Then they wage a war against them. It doesn't work that way."

Albanese has advocated for the investigation and prosecution of the crimes that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups or individuals had committed against Israeli civilians on 7 October, at the same time, I've said justice must come in and be delivered or is not the answer because it's against international law.

"As we speak, Israel is running extermination raids, neighbourhood per neighbourhood in the areas that was already forcibly evacuated, ethnically cleansed of nearly 1 million people in the northern Gaza, only 400,000 people remained who have been starved, abused and bombed. What the people in Gaza have gone through is really unspeakable, and now it is emptying the land completely."

Western states make the argument that Israel has the right to protect itself.

"But is it protection?" Albanese asked.

"How is what Israel is doing going to make its citizens protected? This is the question. And the blindness at the political level is mind blowing."


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Audio version : https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/international-report/20241101-un-rapporteur-says-israel-s-war-in-gaza-is-emptying-the-land-completely




From the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

 


Your attack on UN special Rapporteur Albanese is so clearly intended to hide your criminal complicity in an ongoing genocide that you truly should be embarrassed. Is there any trick from the genocidaire’s playbook that you will refuse to carry out? By attacking a person who is courageously speaking truth, you obviously hope to draw attention away from the criminal conspiracy that is the Biden White House, State Department, Department of Defense, and your office, all of which have materially aided Israel in committing genocide. Francesca Albanese is an upstander. She will be remembered as a hero. You will be remembered as a perpetrator and an apologist. As experts on the crime of genocide, we can say this with certainty.



Responding to:


As UN Special Rapporteur Albanese visits New York, I want to reiterate the U.S. belief she is unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.



29/10/2024

Gaza: More evidence

 


South Africa has filed 'evidence' of 'genocide' by Israel in Gaza in the ICJ Case

 


 

South Africa has filed "evidence" of a "genocide" committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip with the International Court of Justice, the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.

The document "contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza", the presidency said in a statement, amid claims vehemently denied by Israel.

An official for the Hague-based court on Monday confirmed it had received the document, but did declined to give further detail.

"The evidence will show that undergirding Israel's genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide," said the presidency.

The "memorial" -- the name of the document detailing South Africa's case against Israel before the ICJ -- cannot be made public but laid out evidence in "over 750 pages of text, supported by exhibits and annexes of over 4,000 pages", it added.

South Africa in December brought a case before the ICJ, arguing the war in Gaza breached the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, an accusation Israel has strongly denied.

Several nations have added their weight to South Africa's proceedings against Israel, including Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, Chile and Libya.

While ICJ rulings are legally binding, the court has no concrete means to enforce them.

Israel's Gaza campaign has killed at least 43,020 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.

The offensive was prompted by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 hostages seized by during the attack, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.

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