Licensing Protest or Social Control? The Ministry of Interior’s Communiqué as a Tool for Disciplining the Street

At a moment when the street is boiling under the weight of poverty and oppression, the Ministry of Interior issues a communiqué claiming to “regulate” the right to protest. However, what is being proposed here is not an expansion of freedom, but a clear attempt to place the street in a legal cage, transforming protest from a live grassroots act into an activity managed by prior authorization from the state.

The communiqué begins with familiar language about “rights” and “liberties,” but its essence is quickly revealed: protesting is no longer a practiced right, but a license request submitted to await approval. This means that the state decides when, where, and why people take to the streets. It is an authoritarian attempt to suppress popular protest movements. The state’s decision hollows out the fundamental idea of protest: that it should be an immediate and direct tool of pressure in the hands of the people, not a bureaucratic procedure awaiting an official stamp of approval.

Five days to respond to a protest request? This alone is enough to kill any living movement. The state does not want a vibrant street, but a disciplined one, subject to its conditions, moving within pre-drawn boundaries.

The decision was drafted in elastic language: “public order,” “breach of security,” “the proper functioning of public facilities.” These are not precise legal concepts, but ready-made excuses to open the door to repression at any moment, prevent any protest activity, and thus justify its dispersal by force.

Then comes the direct blow: any unlicensed gathering is considered “rioting” and is punishable. Here, the mask falls completely. What the authorities do not approve of is not a protest, but a crime. With this simplicity, politics is redefined: either you protest with permission according to the state’s wishes, or you are criminalized.

The Thermidorian state issued this decision as a clear repressive tool: to suppress any popular movement opposing it or its policies, especially those expressing the anger of the poor and the popular classes. In contrast, the repeated barbaric gatherings of its supporters will remain outside any real accountability, despite previous experiences showing that they were not limited to chanting, but turned into assaults on citizens and their property, sometimes reaching the point of murder, without deterrent or regulation.

In this sense, we are not facing a “regulation” of protest, but an attempt to redefine who has the right to protest in the first place. The permitted protest is only that which does not disturb the state, while real anger—the anger of hunger, plunder, and oppression—is pushed into the category of “rioting” to be suppressed.

The communiqué reveals something deeper: the state does not want to end the causes of anger, but to manage its results. Instead of facing the social and political crisis, it works to dismantle and control the street, turning it from a force of pressure into scattered, frightened, or submissive masses.

But the street is not always managed from above. Every attempt to place it in an arbitrary legal cage is an indirect admission of fear. As long as anger exists, the tools of control will not eliminate it; they will only delay and accumulate it.

The right to protest is not granted by a communiqué, nor is it reduced to a license. It is a right seized in the field and practiced when people decide to scream in the face of their reality, not when the puppet Thermidorian state allows them to do so.

Prepared by the Frontline Editorial Board