Against the homophobic extreme right : solidarity with the arrested antifascist

Just like a week earlier at the Normal School, the Bloc Identitaire (BI) manifested on the morning of June 5th, at the Vincennes square (in anticipation of Bertrand Delanoe’s (1) presence on the market), their homophobia on public display, similarly as in Bègles (2) at the same time. These inheritors of Unité Radicale (UR), Maxime Brunerie’s organisation, thought they could take over the Parisien streets and get away with it . However, numerous antifascists rapidly gathered in order to prevent them from distributing their homophobic messages. Following some scuffles with the fascists, around 15 antifascists were arrested by the police, of which 6 were kept in custody . Four of them were sent to a detention cell and freed on Monday June 7 th, after being held for over 50 hours in custody. They are called in to appear before court on July 8th, 2004. Furthermore, the police only registered the complaints lodged by the fascists, of which several are presumably well known by the police for their past judiciary records. The police also refused a complaint which came from a customer assaulted on the public market by the fascists. Aside from the publicity that the media gave the Bloc Identitaire concerning their “soupe identitaire” (3) recently denounced by numerous grass roots associations, the Bloc Identitaire seem to benefit from the police’s benevolence since none of their activists were arrested that morning .

We can only hope that justice will not be marked by the same bias and that those who concretely and directly attempt to oppose the diffusion of homophobic and xenophobic ideas will soon have their records cleared. Signed by different collectives, associations and personnalities http://solidarite.samizdat.net/news.php3?detail=n1087367824

.news 1. Parisien French socialist gay mayor 2. A same sex marriage was being celebrated in Bègles that morning. 3. “ Identity soup ”