Police State: French Woman Arrested for Calling President Macron ‘Trash’ on Social Media
Kurt Zindulka
A woman has been arrested for allegedly comparing French President Emmanuel Macron to “trash” on social media, in the latest crackdown on free speech in the supposed home of liberté in Europe.
Last Friday, Valérie, a middle-aged woman in the Saint-Martin-lez-Tatinghem commune of the Calais region of France, was greeted at her home by three police officers, who arrested her for supposedly insulting French President Macron on Facebook under the controversial criminal code that criminalises spreading “contempt of public officials”.
Valérie first came onto the police’s radar after she was pictured in front of some graffiti calling the French leader “trash”, which officers believed she was responsible for writing, a claim she denies. The police went on to confront her with a post on Facebook that she wrote on Tuesday of last week, which said ahead of a Macron press conference: “The trash will talk tomorrow at 1 p.m., for people who are nothing, it is always (sic) on TV that we find the trash.”
For this, she was arrested and will be tried on June 20th, when she faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to €15,000. The vaguely worded statute under which she will be charged, criminalises statements deemed to “affect the personal dignity or the respect owed to a public official”.