PARIS: Thousands marched throughout France this weekend to protest the Sarkozy Law on “internal security,” as rightwing legislators indicated they would be toughening the projected law when it is discussed before Parliament in the coming week.

During major demonstrations in Paris, where several hundred protested the proposed law, but also Rouen and Nantes, where hundreds also marched, some 30 different leftwing and pro-environment organizations chanted a number of slogans.

In fact, the great fear of protesters was that the new law would be used not to solve the problem of the origins of poverty, but simply attack the symptoms and systematically send to jail the urban poor, who are forced to beg in the streets, as well as the squatters who, for lack of proper housing, have taken over hundreds of buildings in the French capital alone.

L’Abbe Pierre, the founder of the Emmaus order that attempts to recycle vagrants, personally asked Interior Minister Sarkozy to see to it that when voted the new law would not be used to place in jail the beggars or squatters who beg or take over unoccupied quarters “when a dignified means of subsistence or lodging has first been proposed to them.”