Toulouse: the conspiratorial posters of Antivax on borrowed time
Sonia Backes, Secretary of State for Citizenship, asked the prefect to use “the recommended ways” to put an end to the antivax poster campaign in the streets of Toulouse.
It is with a simple tweet, far from the official communication channels of the government, that Sonia Backes, the brand new Secretary of State in charge of citizenship, has set foot in the debate which has been agitating Toulouse medical circles for a few days, revolted against the antivax media offensive in the Pink City (read our Thursday edition). “Alert to the anti-vaccination poster campaign in progress in Toulouse, I asked the prefect to use the legal remedies recommended to put an end to it”, she explained, specifying that she had also asked that a report is forwarded to the public prosecutor.
Trouble with public order?
The intention is clear, but not so simple to implement. The famous billboards with false messages that have flourished since July in the streets of Toulouse are installed on the private domain by an advertising network, the company LPDS Luchetta Poster, based in Meurthe-et-Moselle, which is responsible for this media campaign. Considering that as long as there is no political message or pornographic content on these posters, there is nothing illegal. It must be said that the legal question is delicate and difficult to decide. How to intervene to remove these conspiratorial slogans without derogating from the law? When the town hall of Toulouse says it is powerless to act in the absence of disturbance to public order, the Order of Doctors invokes this notion precisely to demand the withdrawal of conspiracy slogans. “We are on a private domain, but the message is public and endangers the population. It is a rape of public health, ”protests Jérôme Marty, president of the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML). Seized at the beginning of the week by Stéphane Oustric, the president of the order of doctors of Haute-garonne, the regional prefect, Etienne Guyot, did not wait for the tweet from the secretary of state to take a position. He first “condemned posters which aim to disseminate misleading information on a crucial public health subject”, before studying the legal means at his disposal to remove the panels.
Legal avenues to be found
“We are examining the legal avenues likely to be pursued against the authors of these posters and those who let them be affixed,” he said on Wednesday. While waiting to clear up the case law, the prefect initially asked the security forces to draw up reports of findings in order to determine very precisely the locations of these posters. All you have to do is press the button! But for Secretary of State Sonia Backes, there is no doubt: “A prohibition order will be taken,” she said.