After more than five years of protests practically every weekend against the government, Emmanuel Macron started prosecuting people who insulted him on social networks to “calm social conflicts” in France.
In this way, he ordered incumbent Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti to file charges through local prosecutors against all people who criticize him with insults on the internet.
There are already detainees for this new measure, starting with Valérie, a woman from the town of Saint-Omer, located in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Haute-France region.
As her lawyer recounts, last March 24, Valérie M. opened her apartment door around 10 am and found three police officers who had the order to take her away in handcuffs.
“She asked them if it was a joke; it was the first time in her life that she had been arrested,” her representative recounted.
Her crime?
She wrote in a Facebook post last March 21 highly critical of Macron’s socialist government.
“This piece of filth is going to address you at 1:00 pm… it’s always on television that we see this filth,” she wrote in a later deleted post.
Accused of “insulting the president of the Republic,” the woman will be tried in Saint-Omer on June 20
If found guilty, she faces a fine of €12,000, which, if not paid, could result in the seizure of her assets or even imprisonment.
Macron justifies the measure as a way to curb the violent protests that have taken place in recent weeks against the pension reform launched by his government.
There have been scenes of chaos and violence across the country, most notably the burning of Bordeaux City Hall by ultra-left radicals.
The woman, a supporter of the “Yellow Vests” protests that shook Macron during his first term, spoke from the detention center with the region’s newspaper La Voix du Nord, said:
“They want to make an example of me.”
She is not the only one charged with “insulting the president”.
Several other citizens have received notices and could face similar fines.
Freedom of speech in France is officially over.
With information from La Derecha Diario