Thibault Mercier et al

Liberté! An open letter by 200 French lawyers protesting against lockdown

Demonstrators gather to protest against the closing of 'non-essential' business in Toulouse (Image: Getty)

After saying there was ‘no question of lockdown’, Emmanuel Macron has announced what many feared: the implementation of a new national and mandatory lockdown. We are lawyers and jurists of all specialities and from all parts of France and write to express our indignation at the injustice of this measure. After being astonished by the first lockdown, we believe that such violations of our freedoms and ways of life are neither viable nor legitimate. Lockdown will have major collateral consequences that will be more harmful than the virus itself.

While we agree with the President’s statement that nothing is ‘more important than human life’. But a national lockdown is an approach reduced to the biology of life alone, forgetting that health is also, according to the WHO definition, ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. Protecting life therefore implies taking into account all its aspects, which are as much social, cultural, spiritual, political and economic as they are health-related.

We understand the anger and concerns of doctors and health workers and we ask the Government to provide them with the necessary means to exercise their professions. Supporting hospitals ought to have been the government’s priority over the last six months. Instead, it allowed itself to be overwhelmed. It now prefers brandishing the threat of a collapse of the health system – to impose measures that are arbitrarily described as a last resort so as not to have to consider other options (which do exist). This insults both doctors and the French people, making them believe that they are not capable of managing the crisis we are going through.

We are deeply concerned about the future of this zero-risk society, which would be ready to stop living so as not to die.

By putting a large part of the country on hold, the Government is sacrificing the bravest of our people: entrepreneurs, the self-employed, craftsmen – those who took risks to invest and create, giving this country colour and life, as well as their employees.

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