“Yellow vest” protesters on Saturday marched in cities across France for a 16th straight week in a bid to keep up pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron in demonstrations again marred by vandalism and violence.
In Paris, a man was reportedly hit in the face by a rubber bullet fired from a controversial riot control weapon, while in the southwestern city of Bordeaux a lawmaker accused police of assaulting him.
About 39,300 people protested nationwide, including 4,000 in Paris, the French Ministry of the Interior said — down from the 46,600 turnout announced the previous weekend.
Photo: AFP
The official figures are regularly disputed by protest organizers, who say that the government is trying to portray the movement as losing support.
However, at least one demonstrator in the capital appeared to acknowledge that their numbers were falling.
“We are less numerous than usual, but we are there anyway and that’s essential,” pensioner Murielle said, adding: “We won’t give up, because the situation is not going to improve, that’s for sure.”
Regarding the possible police shooting of a man with a so-called defense ball launcher, known by the French abbreviation LBDs, Paris police chief Michel Delpuech said: “An internal administrative investigation has been opened.”
The weapons fire 40mm rubber projectiles, considered non-lethal, but have been blamed for serious injuries to a number of demonstrators.
Macron last week rejected a call from rights watchdog the Council of Europe to suspend their use.
In Bordeaux, a lawmaker from the far-left France Unbowed party, Loic Prud’homme, said that police had assaulted him with batons on the edges of a march and that he had filed a formal complaint.
The regional governor said that police had intervened to stop protesters taking an unauthorized route and had done their job correctly.
In Nantes, police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators, some of whom hurled projectiles, including Molotov cocktails and bottles containing acid.
“There has been a lot of damage ... bus shelters, a bank branch, a travel agency, a business,” said Claude d’Harcourt, a regional governor for the Nantes area.
There was also trouble in Nice, Strasbourg and Lille, where protesters marched carrying signs and banners saying: “Macron accomplice of the worst scum, finance,” and “Stop capitalist militias.”
Police used tear gas elsewhere in the country, including at protests in Bordeaux, Morlaix, Arles and Lyon.
“Those who are still in the street today will never give up, it’s the hard core,” said one demonstrator at the Lyon protest, a farmer from the region.
On Friday, Macron had repeated a call for calm after weeks of “unacceptable” outbreaks of violence.
The protests have also seen spates of vandalism, with monuments defaced, businesses damaged and cars set alight.
Macron has pledged 10 billion euros (US$11.2 billion) in response to anger over the high cost of living, including tax cuts for some pensioners and measures to boost low wages.
He has also spearheaded a “grand national debate” by way of the Internet and town hall meetings to gather opinions on how the country could be reformed.
This week’s demonstrations had been billed by organizers as a prelude to a “big month” of protests to mark four months of the movement and the end of the debates championed by Macron.
Many yellow vest protesters dismissed the debates as a platform for Macron rather than a forum for real discussion.
The protests, which have no organized leadership and are named after the fluorescent vests that French drivers must keep in vehicles, began on Nov. 17 last year over increasing fuel taxes — later reversed by the government.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS