French Police Arrest Christians for Billboard Campaign Against Olympics Blasphemy

Full on Stalinist tactics by the French Republic in defence of the blasphemous opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  

From The Stream

By Jules Gomez, MTh, PhD

Campaigners were denied communication with lawyers or family and held without food or water.

Armed French police arrested six Christians this week for renting a coach to drive around Paris displaying the slogan “Stop Attacks on Christians,” with an image of the Last Supper parody from the recent Olympic opening ceremony.

On Monday, police stopped the CitizenGO team of Christians at gunpoint and detained them at two stages in police stations, where they were handcuffed, interrogated, strip-searched, refused permission to contact a lawyer or family member, and forced to spend the night in cells without food or water.

“CitizenGO’s campaign, supported by thousands of donors, was in protest against the anti-Christian and hate-promoting opening ceremony at the Paris Olympic Games,” a press release from the organization stated.

“Since the last Olympics in 2021, over five million Christians have been displaced from their homes and faced persecution, yet the International Olympic Committee planned an offensive display featuring naked drag queens mocking the Last Supper.”

False Charges

The CitizenGO team of three men and three women had hired the media bus from Spain to circulate Paris. They were not even in the bus, but were filming for media content near the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral, team member Jason Steyn told The Stream.

Police confiscated the belongings of the Catholic and evangelical campaigners, who come from six nations, and treated them like criminals, along with their Spanish bus driver. Three of the team members speak fluent French, Steyn said.

Police charged the Christians with “protesting without permission from the French government,” even though the campaigners were not part of any protest or demonstration. “We were arrested outside the boundaries of the law. The arrest was illegal,” Steyn emphasized. “They tried to push the law outside its limits.”

Under a February 12, 2022, French Supreme Court judgment, “a convoy may or may not be considered a demonstration.”

“There is no mention of one bus,” Steyn said. “Hence, a single bus cannot be considered a convoy and, as a consequence, a demonstration.”

Stopped at Gunpoint

The coach had been driving around Paris since 9 a.m. When the authorities realized it was attracting “immense attention” from bystanders and Olympics attendees, high-level political authorities ordered the police to stop the bus and arrest the campaigners, CitizenGO maintained.

In an exclusive interview with The Stream, Steyn described how the police halted the bus at gunpoint. The driver then phoned the campaigners to tell them what had happened.

“We were almost lured to the police station under false pretences,” said Steyn. “When we got to the bus, the police told us they needed us to accompany them to the police station because they didn’t have their computers and simply wanted to get a statement from us.”

When the team reached the police station, a French-speaking team member explained to the police that the coach was circulating Paris as a “mobile billboard,” there was no intent to protest or hold a demonstration, and the team members were not congregating around or even driving the bus.

Belongings Confiscated

The team and the driver were relieved of their identification documents and taken to the first station in a police van. There they were detained in a holding cell with a policeman guarding the entrance of the room.

“At this point they were cordial. This is the last time we were given water to drink,” Steyn recalled. Half an hour later, police informed the CitizenGo team that they were under arrest. Their belongings were confiscated. They were told the matter had been “escalated” to the National Police “following orders from above.”

Detectives, assisted by translators on the phone, then questioned the Christians one by one. Steyn clarified that this was “not the official interrogation” but said police asked the team members some odd questions, including how much one person earned and how much he paid for his rent.

“This line of questioning was essentially to build a profile on us,” he observed. At this point, Steyn was told he had the right to phone a doctor, a lawyer, or a family member. In contrast, some other team members were refused permission even to call a lawyer, he revealed.

Unequal Treatment

When Steyn asked if he could call a priest, the police said that would not be possible since France is a secular country. “This was a sad moment for me because France is regarded as the eldest daughter of the Church,” he said. “This was the moment I realized how much she had fallen.”

While the police allowed Steyn to call his wife in another part of Europe, the rest of the team were still denied any phone contact with their French CitizenGO lawyer. Other detectives told some team members they could only contact a person or family member in France, not any other country.

“We were not treated equally,” Steyn maintained. “I’m not sure if it was some officers being kinder than others, or some officers being harsher than others.”

“Moreover, our requests for food and drink were always responded with ‘Later, later.’ Delay seemed to be the ultimate goal,” he said.

Handcuffed and Strip-Searched

An hour later, National Police officers handcuffed the team members and transported them in a prison van with its siren on to a second police station. The team were then separated by gender and placed in two holding cells.

The Christians were searched after being stripped down to their underwear; one of the female detainees was even forced to remove hers.

Meanwhile, the police said that they were trying to contact the team’s lawyer, but since he was not responding they would appoint a state lawyer to be present at the interrogations.

Steyn said he was the first to be interrogated, just after midnight. “The lawyer, through a translator, told me that the arrest was ‘ridiculous’ because no crime had been committed,” he said. “The detective interrogating me told me that he would speak to the prosecutor if a crime had been committed.”

Free to Go?

At 2:30 a.m., the Christians were told they were free to go since the prosecutor had confirmed there was no reason to detain the team.

“They finally managed to contact our lawyer, who was present for the last of the interrogations. I think this is what actually stopped it,” Steyn said. “Our lawyer, who was aware we had been arrested, had spent the evening going from police station to police station trying to find us. This is why the story of the police trying to contact our lawyer is unconvincing.”

Since the team members were not released at the same time, some of them were held with real criminals who were brought in during the wee hours of the morning, Steyn added.

“I am deeply disturbed by this entire situation. We have been put through a process reserved for drug smugglers and violent thugs,” he said. “There is a definite political motivation behind these actions carried out by the police.

Ordeal Not Over

“In fact, the last team member, a female, wasn’t even released because the police had apparently forgotten about her,” he added. ”We had to ask where she was for them to be reminded and for us to obtain her release.

“We were all out at around 4:30 a.m., but we were not all free because the three team members who had not been interrogated were told to stay within the Paris boundaries and report back at 2 p.m.”

After the second round of interrogations, the team members were told they were not free yet because the prosecutor was reconsidering whether to charge them. However, 20 minutes later the prosecutor phoned CitizenGO’s lawyer to say the Christians had been acquitted of all charges.

“But our ordeal was not over as they were still holding the coach,” Steyn said. “When our bus driver went back with our lawyer to the police, they said they wouldn’t release the bus until the images of the Olympic blasphemy and the slogan were removed.”

The lawyer, however, argued that if no crime had been committed, the images could not be classified as illegal. The police only handed over the keys to the bus when the lawyer threatened to charge them with theft – and then only on the condition that the team would leave Paris immediately.

“We only left the city because the driver said he wanted to leave and would never return to France,” Steyn said. “It was never our intention to protest or cause the slightest disruption since we knew the Olympics was in progress. We asked them not to attack Christians, and they attacked us.

CitizenGo is considering suing the French attorney general for the unlawful arrest and detention of its members.