Nice Officials Say They’ll Sue Internet Users Who Share Photos Of French Fashion Police Fining Women In Burkinis by Mike Masnick.
From the post:
This seems pretty ridiculous on all sorts of levels, but never think things are so ridiculous that some politicians can’t make them worse. Guillaume Champeau from the excellent French site Numerama alerts me to the news that the deputy mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi is threatening to sue those who share these images over social media. Yup, France, a country that claims to pride itself on freedom is not just telling women that they can’t cover themselves up too much on the beach, but that it’s also illegal to report on the police following through on that. Here’s is the awkward Google translation of the French report:
Christian Estrosi … has published a press release by the city of Nice, to announce that he would file a complaint against those who would broadcast pictures of municipal police verbalize women guilty of exercising what they believed to be their freedom to dress from head to feet on the beaches.
” Photos showing municipal police of Nice in the exercise of their functions have been circulating this morning on social networks and raise defamation and threats against these agents ,” the statement said.
Wait. Showing accurate photos creates defamation against the police? How’s that work? Estrosi apparently says that legal actions have already been filed, though Numerama was unable to confirm any legal actions as yet. The article also notes that despite Estrosi implying otherwise, police do not have any sort of special protections that say they cannot be photographed while in public.
It’s not clear if you have to take the picture or merely share the picture.
Just in case sharing is enough, here is the picture from Mike’s post:
There are a number of variations on this image. I suppose all of them count as far as “defamation” of the police.
If reposting isn’t sufficient to defame the French police enforcing the burkiki ban, please consider this post an active request for images of French police enforcing that ban.