{"id":206570,"date":"2020-05-02T07:31:01","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T07:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206570"},"modified":"2020-05-04T07:45:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T07:45:40","slug":"france-police-asked-to-stand-down-during-ramadan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206570","title":{"rendered":"France: Police asked to stand down during Ramadan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Lord \u2013 Voice of Europe April 29, 2020<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

French police on the streets of Strasbourg. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

A leaked internal document shows that police in the French department of Calvados have been asked to \u201cshow restraint\u201d in dealing with migrants during Islam\u2019s holy month of Ramadan, which began on April 23.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The document, which is dated April 24, was sent by the Director of Calvados\u2019 Department of Public Safety to all branches of the police in the region, which is in Normandy. A copy was obtained by the French newspaper Le Parisien and reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span> on their website.<\/span><\/p>\n

Police are being asked only to intervene in cases of \u201cassaults on people,\u201d or where there is \u201cserious property damage\u201d during Ramadan. The note specifies that police should not take action in \u201cneighborhoods that have a high concentration of people during Ramadan,\u201d such as \u201ccontrolling a group of people who have gathered to eat after sunset\u201d in violation of lockdown and social distancing measures intended to combat the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).<\/span><\/p>\n

The document says that such restraint is necessary \u201cin order to prevent a breach of the lockdown rules from degenerating and leading to an even greater incident of urban violence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In cases where police receive calls from concerned citizens about such incidents, police are instructed to tell people only that \u201ctheir call has been taken into account,\u201d and that officers should \u201ctake care not to comment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of France\u2019s police unions are outraged that this document emerged at the same time that the government has been increasing the punishments for those who violate the lockdown, creating a double standard. \u201cContrary to what the government has stated and repeated, this note proves that the police are being instructed not to go into certain areas,\u201d Fabien Vanhemelryck, a representative of the police union Alliance, said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response, France\u2019s Chief of Police demanded explanations after the contents of the document were publicized. In a message the National Police sent to the AFP, they reassured the public that officers \u201cwill intervene anywhere to ensure the safety of people and property, whatever the circumstances.\u201d He requested that Calvados\u2019 Department of Public Safety provide an explanation for the document.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not known if similar instructions have been issued in other French departments.<\/span><\/p>\n

French cities have been gripped by a particularly strong outbreak of street violence in recent weeks, with attacks on police and other first responders becoming commonplace, as previously reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by Voice of Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaked internal document shows French police in Calvados were asked to “show restraint” dealing with migrants during the holy month of Ramadan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206570"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206573,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206570\/revisions\/206573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}