Are The Yellow Vests Headed To Switzerland?
Act 42 of the Yellow Vest Movement took place in several cities on August 31. Yellow Vests marched in the streets of France in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Paris and even Geneva, Switzerland.
In a second mobilization in Geneva
this year, around 800 gilets jaunes
(yellow vests) from France trooped in front of the United Nations headquarters
to protest police violence and defend their right to demonstrate in France.
“We went around France in August to encourage people to come to Geneva to denounce police violence,” Chloé Frammery, Geneva’s co-organiser of the action, told Keystone-ATS.
The group delivered documentation of violence, committed by the French police since November 2018, to the UN Secretary General.
Frammery explained that the file
“includes records of injuries due to the use of batons, tear gas grenades and
encirclement by law enforcement officials, in violation of French and
international law.”
Protestors denounced police use of riot control weapons, particularly the Swiss-made LBD40 (GLO6 launcher devices), which has been used to subdue demonstrators in France.
Priscillia Ludosky, one of the
leading figures of Yellow Vests, joined the rally in Geneva.
“I’m here in front of the United
Nations to revolt against the conditions [imposed by French President Emmanuel]
Macron on Yellow Vests because of the police violence we really tasted,” she
told AFP.
“We are the country of human rights anyway, France, you realise the signal that is given to the whole world.”
Chanting “Thank you Switzerland”,
protestors thanked the local police for their restraint.
Phrases such as “Macron
resignation” or “There’s nothing good about Macron” were written
on the vests. Two women were dressed up as “sans-culottes” from the French
Revolution as “symbols of the people who rise up for their rights,”
one of them explained.
In February, several hundreds of Yellow Vests gathered in the same area to urge the UN to send representatives to observe police treatment during rallies.