When Guillaume Tatu (40), former deputy mayor for youth of Annecy, recorded himself with his cell phone while walking to support the students who were demonstrating, he did not expect the repercussions it had. The member of the environmental party and the New Popular Front published a video on Thursday in support of young people who demand improvements in the situation of public education. The next day, the police summoned him to testify. Someone had reported that the recording made public insults against the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Núñez. In the video, Guillaume humiliates the minister by calling him a "piss" and a "bucket of urine."
Tatu insulted Núñez because he considers that he is the cause of the police repression that has been taking place in France for two weeks, where more than 5,000 people have been questioned or detained by law enforcement forces - 85% of them minors. On September 30, the Minister of the Interior had sent a letter to prefects and security forces to tell them that "the use of proportional force should never inhibit action to restore order." The Government thus defended that the security forces should be able to act to restore order in the face of the increase in blockades and incidents.
For Tatu, the police response came just 15 hours after he published the video. On Monday, October 5, he had to appear at the police station, accompanied by his lawyer. "I was surprised by how quickly they summoned me," Guillaume said stupefied. The trained journalist acknowledged that he had said that the minister was pissed, but justified that this should not lead to him being denounced for insults and that the real reason lies in the Government's fear of citizen mobilization, as he also indicated in the video. Furthermore, he used his freedom of expression to justify his comments. "The police have assumed that I have committed that infraction. I have not committed any infraction and I am not going to delete the video," he explained forcefully.
Tatu still does not know if it was the French Intelligence services who reported his video. Now he has to wait three months to find out who filed the complaint and whether it will be filed or taken to trial. If convicted, the fine he must pay could reach 12,000 euros. "At the moment I have spent 600 euros (on lawyers)," explained the former media advisor to Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2017 elections.
Social networks such as TikTok and Instagram are full of videos recorded by young people in the protests that are managing to mobilize a segment of the population that is no longer guided by union leaders or political parties and that opts for new technologies to spread their messages, advise on how to act if they are arrested or if police officers are recorded, as well as to coordinate.
Police observe the role of platforms in the protests. A note from the Paris police highlighted how a young influencer who went to Creteil to support an institute that was protesting had become one of the promoters of the protests due to the viral content he generated on social networks. These have become a tool for citizen mobilization within a movement that has no leaders.
Guillaume emphasizes that there are more people who have been reported for comments like his. "I am nobody and look how they have persecuted me," laments the former deputy mayor, who affirms that "the Government is afraid" and believes that, for this reason, minors are being so repressed. "I'm going to be careful with what I say on social networks, they know everything I write and say," Guillaume said in another video published after leaving the police station.
At the same time, human rights organizations such as La Ligue des droits de l'Homme have warned of the numerous arrests of minors and denounce a violation of the freedoms of demonstration and expression.
While students continue to attend the large mobilizations called, Guillaume's case shows that police surveillance not only takes place on the streets but also on social networks.
