Raging protests in France cast ominous shadow on Paris 2024 Olympics

By Reza Javadi

Anti-pension reform protesters in France earlier this week stormed the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics in a posh north Paris neighborhood, leading to pitched battles with police.

While the police managed to evict them from the building with brutal force, it gave rise to fears that athletes and fans might be in the grip of violence during the biggest sporting carnival next year.

"Several dozen CGT militants got into the building for a few minutes to deploy banners against pension reform. There were no violence and no damage," a Games spokesperson told Reuters after the BFM television images showed protesters occupying the building in Aubervilliers.

The move was the latest flashpoint in the lengthy standoff between members of the General Confederation of Labour trade union and French President Emmanuel Macron over the controversial pension reform bill which is aimed at increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old.

Anti-government demonstrations sparked in France on January 19, 2023, after the bill was proposed by the Macron government, with a series of industrial actions causing widespread disruption, including garbage piling up in the streets, apart from public transport cancellations.

Ever since, almost every week, hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Paris and other major French cities, clashing with the French police. At the height of these anti-government protests earlier this year, more than a million people took part in the rallies.

Several organizations, including human rights groups such as Reporters Without Borders and France's Human Rights League, have condemned the crackdown on protesters, French citizens and journalists.

Rolling strikes and anti-government protests across the country have usually descended into violence on the fringes, with clashes intensifying since April.

Dark clouds over Paris 2024 Olympics

The civil unrest in France comes as the country is preparing to host next year’s summer Olympics. The Olympic Flame will be lit at Olympia in Greece on April 16 next year before it goes to France.

The raging protests have cast an ominous shadow on the greatest sports extravaganza on earth with human rights activists and sports observers fearing major disruptions and even violence during the event set to take place between July 26 and August 11, 2024.

The storming of the Olympic headquarters in the French capital Paris by angry protesters earlier this week demonstrated the sensitivity of the issue and how unsafe Paris is as a host city, experts opine.

The slogan of ‘No withdrawal, No Olympics’, or #pasderetraitpasdeJO, has been reverberating on social media in recent weeks, reflecting the popular mood and public anger against the Macron government's controversial law.

Danielle Simonnet, a member of France’s National Assembly, was quoted as saying by The Nation that the new law fast-tracked by Macron signals an “authoritarian drift” under his government.

He hastened to add that linking the pension reform law and the Paris 2024 Olympics points to “a deep political crisis marking a strong aspiration for the Sixth Republic so that the president stops behaving like a monarch against the people.”

“Connecting the rejection of the Olympics with the rejection of the pension law marks the level of popular awareness of the same logic that underlies them: a policy for the profits of a handful, at the expense of the overwhelming majority.”

Last month, there were reports about power outages at several Olympic venues in France, including the Olympic Village and Stade de France stadium to protest the authoritarianism of Macron.

French anti-Olympics activist Natsuko Sasaki was quoted as saying that people use the #pasderetraitpasdeJO "because they think sabotaging the Games is a good idea to make Emmanuel Macron lose face.”

“People who use the hashtag may not know that some dedicated anti-Olympics activists, like myself, have been working for years,” Sasaki told The Nation.

“Many of them may not know workers’ gardens were destroyed for an Olympic training pool, immigrant workers lost their homes for the sake of the Olympic Village, a new onramp for the Games runs directly alongside a school in Saint-Denis Pleyel, a public park was privatized for the media village. They may not know that France became the first European country that allows AI video surveillance for the Games.”

Protests, violence during Paris Olympics?

Observers believe that heightened security measures by the French government won’t be enough for the millions of people arriving in Paris next summer from getting caught in the middle of turmoil.

Olympics organizing committee president in Paris, Tony Estanguet, was at pains to confirm that it is a “challenge [for France] to organize a ceremony with these conditions.”

In order to manage the situation, French police have beefed up security measures. Figuring out the extent of disruption and disorder that French forces may encounter in the face of protests at Olympic venues, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanian warned of “enormous public order problems”.

Civil liberty rights activists have also raised the alarm that Olympic security measures risk eroding freedoms in Paris. Critics have raised privacy concerns about video surveillance technology that will be used along with artificial intelligence software to flag potential security risks such as crowd surges.

“I think President Macron wants to mark his presidency. But the risk is there," Bertrand Cavallier, the former commander of France's national gendarmerie police training center, was quoted as saying by Associated Press, referring to the risk of protests and crackdowns amid the Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, dozens of French cities have been protesting the Paris Olympic Games sponsor Airbnb, arguing that the company is forcing renters to the lucrative short-term stay benefits to owners.

“This is destruction, entire neighborhoods are being emptied,” Franck Rolland, a Saint-Malo activist who leads the protest group, said during a news conference earlier this week.

Chinese Olympics boycott and double standards

Several Western countries, led by the United States, last year announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, accusing China of alleged human rights violations.

Officials from the US, UK, Canada and some other countries did not attend the Beijing Olympics events in February 2022, despite warnings from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) not to politicize it.

The United States said at the time that the boycott was because of China's alleged "human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang". British MP Duncan Smith said the Chinese government commits “human rights abuses in the Uyghur, Tibet and sends near-daily military incursions into Taiwan's airspace”.

The same governments are now silent over the widespread protests in France and brutal police crackdown against French protesters in Paris and other major French cities, say rights activists.

“The double standards are glaring. When it comes to Paris, it is business as usual, but when Beijing was hosting the Olympics, they were all up in arms, making outlandish accusations,” Martin Clarke, a Sydney-based human rights activist, told the Press TV website.

Rights activists say the French government is using the Olympic Games to target poor and homeless people, moving them out of the city to make room in budget hotels for foreign tourists.

France’s sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra warned against making the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris a “scapegoat” for people’s anger and frustration over social problems.

“We shouldn’t make the Olympics the scapegoat of all our frustrations. It’s important not to distort the facts and blame the Olympic Games for all our social problems,” Oudéa-Castéra was quoted as saying.

Paris, fans and experts believe, cannot be an ideal host for the greatest sports carnival amid raging anti-government protests and mounting anger over the way poor people are being treated.

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