The Olympics which will open in less than 100 days will accompany a large-scale security reinforcement. 45,000 police officers and gendarmes mobilized, soldiers, private security agents and even 2,500 police officers from foreign countries… Darmanin’s XXL repression plan continues to strengthen. This Wednesday, https://twitter.com/canardenchaine/status/1783013016830644246 the system of the famous QR codes which will be put in place during the Games. To access certain areas close to the Olympic sites, systematic checks will be put in place by the police. Controls which will concern the hundreds of thousands of people who came to attend the Olympics, but also the workers, the customers of the businesses in the area but also…. the 20,000 local residents who live there. Darmanin, under the guise of wanting to “guarantee the safety of all”, will set up a real generalized control system which should affect everything, according to the Ducknearly a million people during the Games.
Among the 45,000 police officers and gendarmes mobilized for the Olympic Games, some of them will therefore be assigned to control and filter these areas. The systematic checks will consist of scanning a personal QR code, which will make it possible to check in real time whether the identity of its holder appears among eleven French police and counter-espionage files, including the criminal record and the list of S files. If the person appears in one of these files, they will be prohibited from accessing these areas, even if they live there, and may be arrested by the police if, for example, they are under OQTF.
To obtain a QR code, it will be necessary to register on an online government platform from May 10. To carry out the reconciliations, 180 analysts will work full time to verify the criminal records of each registered person. If the process of requesting a QR code is not carried out, the person will automatically be inadmissible in these restricted areas.
The implementation of QR codes, the resulting police checks and potential arrests are part of a broader government policy. The latter intends to take advantage of the Olympics to accentuate its repressive and anti-poor policies which primarily affect working-class neighborhoods. Darmanin applies a proven Olympic method, which consists of using the pretext of securing the event to bring exceptional measures into common law. The minister considers these new security measures as a “legacy of the Olympic Games”, as was the case in Rio des Janeiro in 2016. Between the expulsions of migrants and homeless people in Paris, the gentrification of part of 93 and the reinforcement security, these Olympics will be anything but “popular Olympics” as the Macron government claims.
While the executive is counting on the Olympics to improve its international image. Macron and his capitalist friends fear nothing more than a resurgence of the class struggle. Faced with the Olympic repression promised by the government, it is time for the labor movement to put itself in battle order, relying for example on the strike notices filed in the public service to make the Games an opportunity to return to the offensive against Macron.
