(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned police use of a stun grenade against Georges Bartoli, a freelance photographer working for the news agency Reuters, while he was covering a protest against genetically-modified crops on 25 September 2004 in Valdivienne. Bartoli sustained minor injuries to both legs when the grenade detonated and he had to be hospitalised. […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned police use of a stun grenade against Georges Bartoli, a freelance photographer working for the news agency Reuters, while he was covering a protest against genetically-modified crops on 25 September 2004 in Valdivienne. Bartoli sustained minor injuries to both legs when the grenade detonated and he had to be hospitalised.
“We call on you to open an investigation into the circumstances that led the police to throw a grenade at this photographer,” RSF said in a letter to Vienne prefect Bernard Prévost.
“The fact that he was clearly identifiable as a photographer – wearing a press armlet and with two cameras hanging from his neck – and the fact that he was keeping his distance from the protesters suggest that he was deliberately targeted, in which case exemplary punishments are called for,” the organisation added.
Approximately 15 people in Valdivienne were injured when police clashed with demonstrators who had come to cut down a field of genetically-modified maize. Bartoli said he was alone at some distance from the demonstrators, just a few metres from the police and clearly identifiable as a journalist, when the stun grenade was thrown in his direction.
Alain Darrigrand, a reporter with France 2, and Christophe Garnier of LCI and TF1 also said they were deliberately targeted by the police. In a joint statement, they said they were filming the demonstration from a place where they were on their own and easily identifiable by their cameras when the police threw tear gas and a stun grenade from a distance of about one metre.
“This action targeted us as journalists and was designed to prevent us from filming at the height of the demonstration. It succeeded, because we were unable to carry on doing our work as reporters for several minutes after this attack,” they claimed in the statement.
