Nearly 1,000 Arrested as French Protests Turn Violent in Multiple Cities
Around 410,000 to 800,000 demonstrators marched across France on Saturday, prompting police to use tear gas and water cannon, and resulting in close to 1,000 arrests.
Police reported close to 1,000 arrests after large-scale demonstrations across France on Saturday, where authorities said between 410,000 and 800,000 people took to the streets to protest rising living costs and school conditions. About 70,000 officers were deployed, and restrictions were imposed in several cities to prevent the unrest from escalating.
While many marches remained peaceful, clashes erupted in Paris when a crowd moving from Porte d'Italie to Porte de Vincennes encountered an elite police unit. Protesters erected makeshift barricades and threw projectiles, prompting police to use batons and tear-gas grenades. In Lyon, officers also deployed tear-gas after a crowd gathered in an area deemed off-limits by the local prefecture.
In Marseille, rubbish bins were set alight and metal sheets used to block streets, while in Bordeaux demonstrators removed boards from a building to construct a barricade. Two people were reported seriously injured, one in Toulouse and another in Clermont-Ferrand.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that “several thousand radical activists gathered at the rear of the march, including around 500 individuals identified as rioters,” and that the number of arrests would likely rise.
A protester in Paris, identified as Zelie, told the BBC that demonstrators were “frustrated” and felt “suffering a lot” since President Emmanuel Macron took office. Two teenage protesters expressed despair over their generation’s situation and linked the recent looting to poverty and police violence.
Separate from the unrest, about 13,000 people attended a peaceful rally against the National Rally party in Orléans. Similar protests occurred in other European capitals, including Tirana, Brussels and Milan, where authorities used tear-gas and a large security presence to disperse demonstrators.
The French Chambers of Commerce and Industry estimated damage to businesses at hundreds of millions of euros, with more than 2,000 shops affected during the weekend’s unrest.