PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has signed into law legislation giving security forces greater powers at demonstrations that opponents claim violates civil liberties, the official journal said Thursday.
The bill, which was approved by lawmakers in February, aims to crack down on violence that has marred the “yellow vest” protest movement, which has rocked France since erupting in November.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Thursday hailed the law as a “text which protects the French in the face of insecurity and violence.”
“It’s a text that protects our institutions and our liberties,” he wrote on Twitter.
But in a move indicative of the political trouble caused for Macron by the “yellow vest” movement, France’s Constitutional Council, its highest constitutional authority, refused this month to give its green light to one of the most contentious parts of the legislation.
It would have given the authorities the power to ban from demonstrations any individual “posing a particularly serious threat to public order.”
That article was accompanied by a file of named of people wanted by the police, which critics strongly denounced as violating citizens’ freedom of assembly as protected in the constitution.
But the council did approve two other key parts of the legislation, including giving the authorities the power to search bags and cars in and around demonstrations at the demand of a prosecutor.
It also approved making it a criminal offense to conceal the face at a demonstration, punishable by a year in prison and €15,000 ($17,000) in fines.
The French minister in charge of relations with parliament, Marc Fesneau, had indicated Wednesday that the government was not planning to go back to parliament to adapt the legislation in further debates.
The yellow vest protests against social inequality have proved the biggest challenge to Macron since he came to power, taking much of the momentum out of his reformist agenda.
He has since sought to fight back, touring France in town hall-style meetings to listen to people’s grievances in a campaign analysts see as a qualified success.
Macron is expected to address the nation in the coming days with new measures aimed at assuaging the protesters’ anger, in particular over what Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Monday called an “enormous exasperation” over taxes.
The official journal is France’s gazette of record and the appearance of legislation in the publication means it has been enacted into law.
Macron signs into law controversial French ‘anti-rioters’ bill
Macron signs into law controversial French ‘anti-rioters’ bill
- The bill aims to crack down on violence that has marred the ‘yellow vest’ protest movement
- The yellow vest protests have proved the biggest challenge to Emmanuel Macron since he came to power
A month on, flood-struck Aceh still reels from worst disaster since 2004 tsunami
- Aceh accounts for almost half of death toll in Sumatra floods that struck in November
- Over 450,000 remain displaced as of Friday, as governor extended state of emergency
JAKARTA: Four weeks since floodwaters and torrents of mud swept across Aceh province, villages are still overwhelmed with debris while communities remain inundated, forced to rely on each other to speed up recovery efforts.
The deadly floods and landslides, triggered by extreme weather linked to Cyclone Senyar, hit the provinces of North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh in late November.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia, was the worst-hit. Accounting for almost half of the 1,137 death toll, a month later more than 450,000 people are still unable to return to their homes, as many struggle to access clean water, food, electricity and medical supplies.
“We saw how people resorted to using polluted river water for their needs,” Ira Hadiati, Aceh coordinator for the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, told Arab News on Friday.
Many evacuation shelters were also lacking toilets and washing facilities, while household waste was “piling up on people’s lawns,” she added.
In many regions, people’s basic needs “were still unmet,” said Annisa Zulkarnain, a volunteer with Aceh-based youth empowerment organization Svara.
“Residents end up helping each other and that’s still nowhere near enough, and even with volunteers there are still some limitations,” she told Arab News.
Volunteers and aid workers in Aceh have grown frustrated with the central government’s response, which many have criticized as slow and ineffective.
And Jakarta continues to ignore persistent calls to declare the Sumatra floods a national disaster, which would unlock emergency funds and help streamline relief efforts.
“It seems like there’s a gap between the people and the government, where the government is saying that funds and resources have been mobilized … but the fact on the ground shows that even to fix the bridges, it’s been ordinary people working together,” Zulkarnain said.
After spending the past two weeks visiting some of the worst-affected areas, she said that the government “really need to speed up” their recovery efforts.
Aceh Gov. Muzakir Manaf extended the province’s state of emergency for another two weeks starting Friday, while several district governments have declared themselves incapable of managing the disasters.
Entire villages were wiped out by the disastrous floods, which have also damaged more than 115,000 houses across Aceh, along with 141 health facilities, 49 bridges, and over 1,300 schools.
The widespread damage to roads and infrastructure continue to isolate many communities, with residents traveling for hours on foot or with motorbikes in search of basic supplies.
“Even today, some areas are still inundated by thick mud and there are remote locations still cut off because the bridges collapsed. For access, off-road vehicles are still required or we would use small wooden boats to cross rivers,” Al Fadhil, director of Geutanyoe Foundation, told Arab News.
“From our perspective, disaster management this time around is much worse compared to how it was when the 2004 tsunami happened.”
When the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck in 2004, Aceh was the hardest-hit of all, with the disasters killing almost 170,000 people in the province.
But MER-C’s Hadiati said that the impact of the November floods and landslides is “more extensive and far worse than the tsunami,” as 18 Acehnese cities and regencies have been affected — about twice more than in the 2004 disaster.
As Friday marks 21 years since the cataclysmic tsunami, Fadhil said the current disaster management was “disorganized,” and lacked leadership and coordination from the central government, factors that played a crucial role after 2004.
“The provincial and district governments in Aceh, they’ve now done all they could with what they have,” he said.
“But their efforts stand against the fact that there’s no entry of foreign aid, no outside support, and a central government insisting they are capable.”
