France: 410,000 join new day of protests – nearly 1,000 arrests
A second straight weekend of protests: the Interior Ministry counted 410,000 demonstrators nationwide, the CGT union almost twice as many. In Paris, police fired tear gas and water cannon in the evening.
Symbolic image · Photo: Guillaume Flament / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Hundreds of thousands of people again took to the streets in France on Saturday to protest crumbling schools, teacher shortages and the rising cost of living. According to the Interior Ministry, 410,000 people took part nationwide, including 110,000 in Paris. The CGT union confederation said almost twice as many. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez reported “nearly 1,000” arrests across the country in the evening.
More than 70,000 police officers and gendarmes were deployed, about 20 percent more than a week earlier. In Paris, clashes broke out at nightfall with what authorities said were about 500 rioters; police used tear gas and water cannon. But the violence was not comparable to the unrest of the previous weekend, according to Al Jazeera. Clashes were also reported in Marseille, and in Lyon police used tear gas against about 150 demonstrators. At least 24 Paris metro stations were closed, and the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay stayed shut.
Authorities banned the route agreed with the unions between Bastille and Nation at short notice and moved the march to the southeastern edge of the city; protest bans were in force in the centres of cities including Lyon, Nice, Rouen and Montpellier. A meeting on Friday between President Emmanuel Macron and student representatives, at which he promised more teachers and a reform of the Parcoursup university admissions system, did not defuse the situation, according to the students. The movement has already announced new protests for next Saturday.