NEWSPAPER: THE GUARDIAN

French police under spotlight over

Liverpool fans’ treatment
Crowd control tactics at Champions League final highlight rift
between law officers and public in France

A Liverpool fan is held by officers of France’s gendarmerie at the Champions

League Final against Real Madrid on 28 May 2022. Photograph: Kai
Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Mon 30 May 2022 15.02 BST
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Television images of Liverpool fans being casually tear gassed and

pepper-sprayed at the Stade de France before Saturday’s
chaotic Champions League final have – not for the first time – trained a
spotlight on France’s policing methods.

Organizations from Amnesty International to the UN’s high commissioner

for human rights have criticized France’s crowd control tactics, with
Human Rights Watch detailing the extensive physical injuries caused by
weapons from truncheons to teargas grenades, rubber bullets and larger
“flash-ball” rubber pellets on peaceful citizens in recent years.

Fake tickets on ‘industrial scale’ caused Paris chaos, says French minister
Read more

A video of four white officers brutally beating an unarmed black music

producer in his Paris studio in November 2020 was the latest in a string
of violent incidents to cause widespread outrage, prompting President
Emmanuel Macron to act.

Announcing a series of reforms last year aimed at improving relations

between the police and public as well as improving officers’ working
conditions, Macron said French police must be “above reproach” and
“when there are mistakes, they must be punished”.

Long a taboo subject, French policing – viewed by its many critics as

instinctively repressive and favouring disproportionate force – has
become a major political issue, especially since the gilets jaunes protests of
2018 and 2019, in which an estimated 2,500 protesters were injured, with
several losing eyes or a limb.
At least 1,800 police and gendarmes were injured in the same protests,
according to interior ministry figures, however, and French police argue
they are the target of growing violence, some of it extreme and
deliberately aimed at maiming or even killing.

Experts say part of the present problem is an intake of hastily recruited,

poorly trained officers since the 2015 Paris terror attacks, when entry
requirements were lowered and training cut from 12 months to eight –
with trainees on duty after three.

But there are underlying issues, too – the principal one being the
fundamental relationship between France’s police and the public. French
police and gendarmes generally see themselves not as servants of the
people but as protectors of the state and government.

That is certainly how most French people see the French national civil
police force and officers from the military gendarmerie – many of whom
will have been posted to communities hundreds of miles removed from
their own.

One criminologist, Sebastian Roché, says the French police are “wired to
be insulated from society, to respond only to the executive”. Combined
with France’s centuries-long tradition of political street protest, that
produces an explosive cocktail.

Wary of the street, French politicians – particularly in the interior

ministry – have long shielded the police, entrenching a deep lack of public
trust. Macron himself said in 2019: “Do not speak of police violence or
repression – such words are unacceptable in a state under the rule of
law.”

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There is also, many French NGOs and community groups say, very clearly
a problem of widespread racism. Nor does France have an independent
police watchdog: the IGPN inspectorate that investigates abuse
allegations is made up mostly of police officers.

Jacques de Maillard, a researcher specialising in police issues, says

France’s police force faces “structural problems, in terms of recruitment,
training, philosophy and management”.
Most officers, he says, join the police for good reasons. But once on the
job, de Maillard told France24 television, they face an uphill battle –
underfunded, overworked and constantly criticised. “It’s exhausting,
frustrating and it breeds resentment,” he said. In 2019, 59 French police
officers committed suicide.

Greater investment, better training and stricter recruitment procedures

focusing on interpersonal skills would all help, experts say. But the key
problem remains that of the French police’s profoundly adversarial
relationship with the public.

“The system needs to be completely reassessed,” said de Maillard,

“beginning with practices on the ground, and making the proportionate
use of force, and good relations with the public, the absolute priorities.”

Who is the audience and how do you know that?

This report is mainly written towards a football fanatic audience, so these people are informed
of the atrocious acts of police brutality during the Champions League Final in France. However,
it’s also meant for the general public and for French people due to its talk about past protests
that happened which ended with a lot of injured citizens.

What is the purpose of the text? Summarize the content.

The purpose of the text is to inform about how human rights are being violated in countries such
as France by the crowd-control police in situations where there are pacific protests and
demonstrations.

The report talks about a key problem that remains in the French police`s bad relationship with
the public, it states that the system needs to be completely reassessed beginning with practices
on the ground, and making the proportionate use of force, and good relations with the public,
the absolute priorities. Announcing a series of reforms last year aimed at improving relations
between the police and public as well as improving officers` working conditions, it also states
that when there are mistakes in the behavior of the police, they must be punished. French
policing has been viewed by its many critics as repressive and favoring disproportionate force
has become a major political issue.

At least 1,800 police and civilians were injured in the protests, according to interior ministry
figures, however, and French police argue they are the target of growing violence. But there are
underlying issues, the main one being the fundamental relationship between France`s police and
the public. The report uses the words of Jacques de Maillard, a researcher specializing in police
issues, who says France`s police force faces “structural problems, in terms of recruitment,
training, philosophy and management”.
What authorial choices do you identify in the text? and what are their effects on the audience

The first authorial choice we were able to see, was that the author included two pictures in the
report that make the topic of the news very evident. The effect it may have on the audience
would be to help them see and visualize what the author is trying to explain to them, since the
images are so crude they use emotional appeal to persuade the audience into feeling sad for the
French citizens.

Another choice that can be identified can be how the author decides to use the incidents that
occured during that finale and then uses them as evidence to support his point that this is not
the first time the French police has gone overboard with civilians. This is so when one reads it, it
is easier to connect the points regarding the overall issue, so it is cohesive and understandable.

The author paints the police in a bad light as to make empathizing with them difficult, this is
with the purpose of making it so the audience can see how badly the police can injure someone.

The way the author talks about the topic is really formal as to make it so the subject of police
brutality is taken seriously as an issue that although it affects France as seen in this report, it is
also a global issue that happens all over the world.

He also uses different authors to support his opinion and how he is not the only one that
believes this.

What is the text about and what has the author chosen to communicate with it?

The text is about police brutality and its physical consequences on those who suffer this type of
aggression, however it also addresses how specifically in France there have been several
occasions where this has happened as if it were normal, since the author highlights it as how
they “casually” threw teargas to protesters.

The author wrote this article to spread awareness on topics that are not talked about enough, in
this case, the daily aggression French people must go through when protesting for their ideals,
beliefs, opinions and basic human rights.
‘America is killing itself’: world reacts
with horror and incomprehension to
Texas shooting
The international press responds scathingly to the tolerance for
gun violence in the US: ‘nothing fundamentally changes’

Mass violence in the US is ‘a recurring drama, to which America’s lawmakers

seem unwilling to put an end’, wrote Iker Seisdedos in El País. Photograph:
Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Wed 25 May 2022 18.36 BST
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Politicians and media around the world have reacted with horror,
incomprehension and weary resignation to news that an 18-year-old
gunman had murdered 19 children and two teachers in America’s 27th
school shooting so far this year.

The politicians mostly observed formalities; commentators, not so much.

In devastated Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was

“deeply saddened by the murder of innocent children”, adding that his
people “share the pain of the relatives and friends of the victims, and of all
Americans”.

US reels after massacre in fourth-grade classroom leaves 21 dead

Read more

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, described the massacre as

“cowardly” and said the French shared Americans’ “shock and grief – and
the rage of those who are fighting to end the violence”. Pope Francis said
he was “heartbroken”.

In London, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the country’s
“thoughts are with all those affected by this horrific attack”, while the
foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said she was “horrified by the news”. Her
thoughts were “with the people of Texas”.

The press, however, did not mince words.

“There’s carnage in a US school, relatives’ endless distress, a grave

presidential speech – then nothing, till the next one,” said Le Monde in a
savage editorial. “If there is still an American exceptionalism, it is to
tolerate its schools being regularly transformed into shooting ranges,
sticky with blood.”

Neither the Uvalde killer, nor the gunman who took 10 lives in Buffalo,
nor the one who killed one and wounded five in a California church faced
“any legal safeguards that might have complicated access to the firearms
they used”, the French daily said.

“America is killing itself, and the Republican party is looking elsewhere.

The defence of the second amendment, in its most absolutist sense, is now
a quasi-sacred duty, escaping all questioning. Always more weapons: that
is Republicans’ only credo.”

Americans, Le Monde said, “bought nearly 20 million firearms in 2021,

the second highest sales in history. They also experienced more than
20,000 firearms deaths, not counting suicides. Yet Republicans are
plainly unable to establish a causal link.”

In the Netherlands, NRC Handelsblad made much the same points. It has

become, the paper said, “a ritual, to which America is more accustomed
than any other nation”: a governor urging togetherness, a president
quoting the Bible, politicians accusing each other of politicising, “and the
countdown to the next one begins”.

Regardless of “generous donations” from the NRA gun lobby, the paper
said, “the right to bear arms has solidified and hardened into dogma in a
polarised American society” – and with a six-to-three conservative
majority on the supreme court, it was a right that might be extended
rather than restricted.

Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) noted that this year

would mark the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, when “the
American nation came together in its shock for a historic moment”. Sadly,
it did not change anything.
‘That smile I will never forget’: the victims of the Texas school shooting
Read more

Now, the paper said, “another gunman has bought, apparently legally, two
semi-automatic rifles and used them to murder 19 children and two adults
shortly after his 18th birthday – three years before he was allowed to
drink beer”.

It is not just “a coalition of gun enthusiasts, gun sellers and fearful

citizens, welded together by the NRA, that stands in the way of
regulation”, the paper said.

“The real stroke of genius was to reinterpret the second amendment right
as the only true badge of constitutional loyalty and a requirement for
preserving the American way of life. In America, in 2022, the fact that 19
pupils were murdered by a heavily armed 18-year-old two days before the
summer holidays will not change anything.”

The Suddeutsche Zeitung said it “probably takes numbers to grasp, if only

faintly, what nobody will ever be able to actually understand”: this was
Americas 215th firearms incident this year in which at least four people
were killed or injured. Last year, there were 693. Since 2013, 2,858
children had been killed or injured.
Spain’s El País had an equally weary analysis. “Mass shootings are such an
essential part of US life they have their own rules,” wrote its
correspondent, Iker Seisdedos. And each one prompts “an artificial
reopening of the debate on gun control”.

The US has 4% of the world’s population, but almost half the pistols and
rifles registered on the planet, he said: “It’s a recurring drama, to which
America’s lawmakers seem unwilling to put an end – even though they
could.”

The most personal response was from Steffen Kretz, a US correspondent

for Danish public radio DR. Hours after the latest tragedy, he said, he got
a letter from the school his seven-year-old daughter attends promising
special help for pupils on Wednesday.

“Only in the US,” write Kretz, “does a seven-year-old attend school to

learn about school shootings. Only in the US do children who only just
learned to ride a bike have to practise hiding under school desks in case a
bad man with a gun comes.”

Every time “a maniac enters a school and spreads death and destruction
in a place that should be safe and secure”, he wrote, “the same debate
begins. And so far it has led only led to the same result: nothing
fundamentally changes.”

The sheer number of weapons in the US, and the power of the NRA, mean
this will “probably continue. America’s love-hate relationship with
firearms has become an example of how money and lobby groups have
corrupted the political system.”

So when Kretz’s daughter meets her friends on Wednesday, they will have
to process the fact that the 19 Texas victims were “children their age,
whose only fault was to be at school that day. There will be a debate, with
arguments everyone knows. Next week, the focus will be elsewhere. Until
it happens again.”
Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Mon 2 Aug 2021 14.05 BST
 

War crimes trial could cast harsh light on

Iran’s new president
This article is more than 1 month old
Case before Swedish court may reveal further details about
Ebrahim Raisi’s role in mass executions in 1988

Ebrahim Raisi has repeatedly denied any responsibility in the death sentences
handed down in the final year of the Iran-Iraq war. Photograph: Atta
Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
 
The war crimes trial in Sweden of a former Iranian official could reveal
further damaging details about the role played in the mass execution of
prisoners 30 years ago by Iran’s president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, barely a
week after his inauguration.
Hamid Noury, 60, was charged last week with “war crimes and murder”
over the killings of more than 100 armed opponents and political
prisoners during the final year of the 1980-1988 war between Iran and
Iraq.
Noury’s trial is due to start on 10 August. He was arrested in Sweden in
2019 while visiting relatives.
Raisi, an ultraconservative who is scheduled to be inaugurated as the
Islamic republic’s president on Tuesday, was one of four judges who sat
on a secret committee set up in 1988 to interrogate thousands of
prisoners.
The president-elect has repeatedly denied any responsibility in the death sentences
handed down to approximately 5,000 prisoners from armed opposition and leftist
groups who human rights groups including Amnesty International say were
executed in Iran that year.
Raisi has said he was acting on orders and that the mass killings were justified by a
fatwa, or religious ruling, from Iran’s late supreme leader – and the founding father
of its revolution – Ayatollah Khomeini.
Swedish prosecutors said last week that in July and August 1988 Noury was
assistant to the deputy prosecutor of Gohardasht prison, about 12 miles (20km)
west of Tehran, where hundreds of prisoners linked to the People’s Mujahedin of
Iran were executed.
The leftist opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is also known as the
People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran, fought alongside the Iraqi army during
the war with Iran, meaning that most of the executions qualify as war crimes.
“The accused [Noury] is suspected of participating in these mass executions and, as
such, of intentionally taking the lives of a large number of prisoners … and,
additionally, of subjecting prisoners to severe suffering deemed to be torture and
inhuman treatment,” the Swedish charge sheet said.
The Swedish public prosecutor Kristina Lindhoff Carleson said the case was being
brought under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national courts
to judge defendants in very serious crimes regardless of where they were
committed.
“Extensive investigation resulting in this indictment shows that even though these
acts were committed beyond Sweden’s territory and more than three decades ago,
they can be subject to legal proceedings in Sweden,” Carleson said.
She said Noury’s alleged role in the execution of armed opponents was a violation
of the Geneva convention and that his complicity in the execution of leftwing
political dissidents after the end of the Iran-Iraq war counted as murder under
Sweden’s penal code, since those killings were not directly related to an armed
conflict.
Noury’s lawyer told Agence-France Presse he denied all charges against him and
police had arrested the wrong man. One plaintiff, Nasrullah Marandi, a former
prisoner in Gohardasht, told AFP that he felt “joy” on hearing of the charges.
More than 150 rights campaigners including Nobel laureates, former heads of state
or government and former UN officials, called in May for an international
investigation into the 1988 killings. Amnesty International and others have long
called called for a formal investigation of Raisi’s role.
Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Wed 1 Sep 2021 16.21 BST
 

Women can continue working in Afghan

government, say Taliban
Official says positions will be filled on merit, but in cabinet and
senior posts ‘there may not be women’

Taliban fighters patrol the Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul after the full US military
withdrawal. Photograph: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock

Women can continue to work in government in Afghanistan but are not guaranteed

cabinet or other senior positions, a Taliban spokesman has said.
Asked whether women and ethnic minorities would have a place in the new Afghan
government, the deputy head of the Taliban political office in Qatar told the
BBC senior positions in the new administration would be filled on merit.
Nearly half of civil service jobs in Afghan ministries were occupied by women who
“should come back to their work”, the official said, but “in the new government that
will be announced, in the top posts, in the cabinet, there may not be women”.
The Taliban are expected to name a government in the next few days but have yet
to declare how they intend to govern – unlike the last time the group seized power
in Afghanistan in 1996, when a leadership council was formed within hours.
Officials have called on Afghans to return home and help rebuild the country. They
have promised to protect human rights, apparently trying to present a more
moderate face than their first regime, known for its brutal enforcement of radical
Islamic law.
But the hardline movement made similar promises 25 years ago, only to ban
women from education and employment, enforce strict dress codes, adopt a
punitive approach to the people of Kabul and publicly hang a former president.
One 22-year-old woman told Reuters she had seen Taliban fighters beating women
with sticks outside a bank in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, adding: “It’s the first
time I’ve seen something like that and it really frightened me.”
Crowds seeking to flee Afghanistan flocked to its borders on Wednesday, as the
closure of Kabul’s airport after Monday’s withdrawal of the last US troops forced
thousands fearful of reprisals to try to reach Iran, Pakistan or central Asian states.
More than 123,000 people were evacuated in the US-led airlift after the Taliban
seized the capital in mid-August, but tens of thousands of Afghans with a potential
right to be rescued remain, with Germany alone estimating their number at
10,000-40,000.
Amid fears that up to half a million Afghans might try to flee, Britain and India
have held separate talks with Taliban officials in Doha, while the US has said it will
use what leverage it can to pressure the Taliban into allowing remaining at-risk
Afghans out.
The Islamist militia, who have promised an amnesty for all nationals who worked
with foreign forces and organisations, have so far focused on keeping banks,
hospitals and government machinery running since their unexpectedly rapid
takeover.
But long queues outside banks and soaring prices in bazaars have underlined the
everyday worries facing Afghanistan’s population, with growing economic hardship
emerging as the new rulers’ most urgent challenge.
Strict weekly limits on cash withdrawals have been imposed but many people still
face hours of queueing to get cash, while humanitarian organisations have warned
of a looming catastrophe amid a severe drought hitting rural areas.
Taliban officials called on Wednesday on rebel fighters under Ahmad Massoud, the
son of a former Mujahideen commander, to lay down their arms in Panjshir
province, where local militia members and former soldiers have formed a last
pocket of resistance.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is home for all Afghans,” said Amir Khan
Motaqi, a senior Taliban leade, said, adding that the movement was “trying to
ensure that there is no war and that the issue in Panjshir is resolved calmly and
peacefully”.
EU under pressure to ban Russian
tourists from Europe
Ukrainian president says Russians ‘should live in their own
world until they change their philosophy’

EU foreign ministers are set to discuss the Russian travel ban later this
month. Photograph: Adrien Fillon/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
Jon Henley
@jonhenley
Wed 10 Aug 2022 17.23 BST

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The EU has been urged to introduce a travel ban on Russian tourists with
some member states saying visiting Europe was “a privilege, not a human
right” for holidaymakers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with the Washington

Post that the “most important sanction” was to “close the borders,
because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land”. Russians
should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy”, he
said.

The Ukrainian president’s call was backed by Estonia’s prime minister,

Kaja Kallas, who tweeted that visiting Europe was “a privilege, not a
human right”, adding: “Time to end tourism from Russia. Stop issuing
tourist visas to Russians.”

Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, has aired the same frustrations,
telling public broadcaster YLE that it was “not right that while Russia is
waging an aggressive, brutal war of aggression in Europe, Russians can
live a normal life, travel in Europe, be tourists.”

Finland has previously said that increasing numbers of Russians have

begun crossing the 830-mile border between the two countries to shop in
border stores and travel onwards to other EU destinations since Covid
restrictions were lifted.

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The EU banned air travel from Russia after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine

in February and the last passenger rail link, between St Petersburg and
Helsinki, was suspended in March, but Russians can still enter Finland by
road.

Finland last week issued a plan to limit tourist visas for Russians, but has
questioned its legal right to impose an outright ban, while other Schengen
passport-free zone countries that share a border with Russia, such as
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, have already dramatically
tightened visa rules.
But all have emphasised the need for an EU-level decision on the matter
since a visa issued by one member of the zone cannot be refused by others
– meaning that ordinary Russians not targeted by individual sanctions
can use their neighbouring countries as transit zones for border-free
onward travel across the region.
Bulgaria’s acting tourism minister, Ilin Dimitrov, said on Wednesday that
more than 50,000 Russians – mainly property and apartment owners,
and often travelling via Istanbul – had visited the country by the end of
June. “The obstacles and expensive tickets do not stop them,” he said.
EU foreign ministers are set to discuss the matter when they meet in the
Czech Republic at the end of August. “In future European council
meetings, this issue will come up even more strongly,” Marin said. “My
personal position is that tourism should be restricted.”
Other countries, however, are not so sure. Some with traditionally close
ties to Russia, such as Hungary, would be likely to strongly oppose a ban,
while member states with large Russian communities such as Germany
argue that the move would divide families and penalise opponents of the
war who have already left.
The European Commission has also questioned the feasibility of a blanket
travel ban, saying certain categories of travellers – including family
members, journalists and dissidents – should be granted visas in all
circumstances.
The calls from Ukraine and some member states for the EU to impose the
blanket ban has drawn an angry response from the Kremlin. “Any attempt
to isolate Russia or Russians is a process that has no prospects,” Kremlin
spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, adding that it displayed an
“irrationality of thinking” that was “off the charts”.