The Council of Europe (CoE) condemns the use of excessive force by the French police against protesters.

APA reports that this was written by the European Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunya Mijatovic, on Twitter.

The commissioner noted that during the protests in France, there were cases of violence against both protesters and law enforcement officers:

"The leading human rights protection organization of the European continent has condemned the violent actions of law enforcement agencies in demonstrations against pension reforms in France, and various human rights groups and left-wing politicians joined it."

According to him, the occasional violent actions of some demonstrators during the protests, the reprehensible actions committed by other people, cannot justify the excessive use of force by law enforcement officers.

"Police violence is not enough to deprive peaceful protesters of their right to free assembly," Mijatovic said.

The commissioner added that the protection of peaceful protesters within the framework of the actions or outside the action, journalists covering the police violence in the action from the police and violent people, and ensuring the freedom of the protesters is the responsibility of the authorities.

It should be noted that in recent days, a number of human rights organizations, court judges and left-wing politicians have sounded the alarm about illegal arrests and overt acts of police violence during protests against French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. .

It should be recalled that people flocked to the streets after the French government applied for the adoption of the draft law without a vote in the parliament last week.

French police detained hundreds of people as they cracked down on protests in the capital and other cities, but human rights activists released the vast majority of those detained, saying they had not been charged.