Comment Re:Words matter (Score 1) 178
It’s perfectly possible that the website disclosed personal information, addresses, social network details and political affiliations of the police officers. And it’s understandable that the police say they are particularly concerned about those portions. I haven’t seen the site.
But I have read the judgment. And the justification of the website ban does not mention police officer’s personal information as a reason for the ban. Instead, the Court explains that it objects to certain language on the website, and the Court gives a few examples:
“Nous n’hésiterons pas à user de termes sévères à l’égard de la Police et de la Gendarmerie, car nous considérons ces institutions comme la fosse commune de l’humanité, le charnier de l’évolution, la mise à mort quotidienne de la déontologie et de l’éthique. Nous serons sans equivoque”
“We will not hesitate to use harsh terms down on Police and Gendarmerie, because we consider these institutions as the common grave of mankind, the mass grave of evolution, killing daily Conduct and ethics. We will be clear”
“Un laboratoire ou CRS [compagnie républicaine de sécurité] et PAF [police aux frontières] s’entraînent à chasser le migrant, à l’humilier, à le torturer psychologiquement. Calais possède sans doute la PAF la plus violente de France”
“A laboratory or Republic’s Security Company and the Border Police are trained in hunting downs migrants, in humiliating, in torturing them psychologically. [The town of] Calais has probably the most violent border police of France”
The Court considers that such language falls under the description
“toute expression outrageante, termes de mépris ou invective qui ne renferme l’imputation d’aucun fait”
“any offensive expression, contemptuous term or invective [violent denunciation] that does not reflect the imputation [attribution of a fault] of any fact”
with respect to the police, and is as such forbidden under a legal exception to the free speech/free press principle.