 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and today we are joined by Pablo Aichel of the SNJCGT that's a national union of journalists in France and we are going to be talking about the controversial global security bill around which protests have been taking place across the country for over two weeks almost three weeks now and we've had protests taking place almost every weekend. A lot of controversial provisions in this bill which give greater power to law enforcement which are a great danger to civil liberties and journalists have been in the forefront of leading many of these protests. Thank you so much Pablo for speaking to us. Thanks for having me. So my first question would be could you maybe first take us through some of the more controversial or dangerous provisions in the bill that the protesters have been highlighting? Yes in this moment we are especially fighting against three articles 21, 22 and 24 in this bill the coalition of journalists unions and NGOs of human rights are focusing especially on these three articles and also in the SNMO that who is the national scheme of maintain of order is how the police work in during protests. So articles 21, 22 and 24 why those one? 24 I started with 24 because everybody's talking about this one it's an article who says that you cannot broadcast the face of policemen people while they are working because this can be used against these policemen and we all know journalists know that it's a principle that you can have to film and broadcast policemen during their work especially during protests because that's the only way you have to see if they are doing well or doing wrong and that's our journalist work. So that's why we are focused on 24. Then there is 21 and 22 who are very interesting too because 21 allows policemen to have cameras cameras and to broadcast what they film with these cameras to use it in the visual speech of the police for example and article 22 says they can use drones they can use drones to to film any protest and to use also these images. So when you see those three articles you see that police want to have their own images and they want to put out journalist images so they want to take in control the way they can say what's what's going on in any protest and that's why journalists together and movie makers documentary makers and younger street reporters say all of this is not a good thing because you want to take in your hands the narrative the visual narrative of any protest then the SNMO the scheme national scheme of maintainer order also allows police to stop the people detain the people and then after a judge can see that's mainly the whole law CGT the union where I belong is against the whole law but the coalition of many unions associations NGO are mainly focused on these three articles and SNMO why because the rest of the law is focused more in giving more more power to local police for example to share some issues with local policies and you know that France has been in a situation of terrorism attacks this past few months and few years so there are people that agree with this kind of law and other people that says it's not fine to share the power of national police with local police the better thing is to have a stronger and bigger national police absolutely right so in this context also wanted to talk about the kind of thinking that is taking place in other announcements made by the government regarding these laws so what are the arguments that they're using to justify these kind of measures of course you mentioned the context in which these laws were introduced but specifically some of these more problematic provisions I know that the government has said that they have considered rewriting of 24 but how have they been justifying these laws I think the the biggest justification is about the security of the policeman but for for us it's not a good justification because I know policemen have been attacked even in their home during their private life but they haven't been attacked because of the images that journalists have made during protests they have been attacked for other reasons there have been other ways that terrorists found the addresses of this or that policemen so the the justification this justification doesn't doesn't stand and that one and the other one is is the social media in in social media there is social fight there is social harassment between several camps and for example a union of police attack journalists in in social media very often we try to defend ourselves but we don't strike back because we think that police unions have to do their job but I think social media is especially Twitter it's it's a place where people are arguing and insulting a lot especially with anonymous accounts and policemen are asking for help there and government is saying this will help you and for us it's not true that would not help in in that issue absolutely right and but there's also I think longer or especially over the past few years Emmanuel Macron's government has been introducing a series of yeah in fact after the yellow vest protests took place as well there were similar measures that were introduced so there's also a sort of surveillance state apparatus that is being strengthened all the more as time passed if I'm not mistaken yes yes in in the last two years we have been seeing a lot of new kind of journalism with a young street journalist who broadcasts on youtube on different social media covering especially yellow vest protests for example and in that moment a union of journalists asked government to put clear rules for policemen to treat journalists during that kind of protests and they didn't listen a lot and this year they issued this national scheme of maintain of order who gives policemen a lot of power a lot of of advantage to to take over journalists but it it's true that since November 2018 and during all the year 2019 we have had a lot of aggressions of policemen against journalists that our union have shown with EFJ European Federation of Journalists on on the platform platform for the protection of journalists at the Council of Europe we see in 2018 that France has grown up in in in the position of countries where the relationship between police and journalists is not going well and in 2020 this has continued and this law is again another step in this how you said security state a police state where where police has a lot more power we also say in France is kind of minority report state it looks like the movie minority report they want to have the power of the decision the power of broadcast the visual narrative and that's not fair and that's not human rights absolutely and this context also wanted to ask you about the organizing that is taking place among journalists so we know that across the world because journalists are facing a large number of attacks it is in fact in my increased across the world in recent times at the same time we also see that organizing among journalists has become far more difficult because the nature of work say unionizing is much much more difficult the news industry itself is in a state of crisis so could you maybe take us through what is the kind of organizing that has been happening especially since these laws came into being our young journalists our journalists in the new media for instance joining these protests and say issues like that yes these these are challenging times for unionizing because unions used to be the traditional union of workers of traditional media who work in company in media or not media but always the main unions like CGT for example are very old institutions CGT is 125 years old and the the work has been changing with the computer with digitalization and with the new medias and we have been working a lot in 2019 about new ways of unionizing we have been working with people from England from UK Union 21 we have been working with EFJ we have been working a lot even with actors technicians musicians because the this challenge of unionizing young people and also with new tools it's very challenging it's very interesting and when there are protests like this people want to have common grounds to fight for and want to have also I don't want to say leaders to follow but at least strong people that can organize a protest for example and that's where all unions have shown that they are strong and they are they have the equipment the first meeting we have three weeks ago the four main unions and one NGO called everybody and said okay we can organize a meeting if this disturb you you come we organize one one letter and we take the track and the sound and everything and and we were a few hundreds and then with internet and facebook and everything more people join all the a lot of journalists on the mainstream media but also young journalists in street reporters and then we were the the week after we were 15 000 and that's where our union cgt for example give logistic support and that's interesting where people are talking together and then the the week after we were two thousand hundred two hundred thousand sorry in paris and well now we are preparing a letter to president mac from absolutely and this context just wanted to quickly ask you what about the next coming couple of weeks what is the kind of broad plan that the unions have regarding the protest well i can't say everything about the plan but the first thing this weekend we are sending a letter to president macron this is a scoop for you because nobody knows yet in in france it will be issued normally tomorrow sunday and when then after next week there is holidays prismas holidays and the situation with with pandemic coronavirus is is not easy in france too so we are slowing down maybe protest and preparing more intellectual actions if we may say the bill will go to the senate uh after so we are taking already um contact rendezvous uh with the senators uh in january and also it's very important for us to show that there have already been people uh that have been killed or harassed by police uh unfairly so there are groups of family of victims and there is especially one one person cedric shuvia what uh who was um uh struggling uh last year on three of january of this year so the the third of january uh will be the first protest for the the first anniversary of the of the death of cedric shuvia that's our next steps right absolutely thank you so much pablo for talking to us thank to you thank you that's all we have time for today keep watching people's dispatch