Protesters yesterday blocked roads, set blazes and were met with volleys of police tear gas in Paris and elsewhere in France, seeking to heap pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron by attempting to give his new prime minister a baptism of fire.
French Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau announced nearly 200 arrests in the first hours of the planned day of nationwide protests.
Although falling short of its self-declared intention to “Block Everything,” the protest movement that started online and gathered steam over the summer caused widespread hot spots of disruption, defying an exceptional deployment of 80,000 police who broke up barricades and swiftly made arrests.
Photo: AFP
Retailleau said a bus was set on fire in the western city of Rennes and that damage to a power line blocked trains on a line in the southwest.
He said that protesters were attempting to create “a climate of insurrection.”
Two days after Francois Bayrou was ousted as prime minister in a parliamentary confidence vote and replaced on Tuesday by Sebastien Lecornu, thousands of protesters responded to online calls to disrupt the country.
Photo: AFP
The “Bloquons Tout” (Block Everything) movement’s call for a day of blockades, strikes, demonstrations and other acts of protest comes as Macron — one of the movement’s main targets — installed his fourth prime minister in 12 months.
The movement has a broad array of demands — many targeting contested belt-tightening budget plans that Bayrou championed before his demise — as well as broader complaints about inequality.
In Paris, firefighters removed burnt objects from a barricade set up by students to block traffic near a high school. Paris police said 132 people had been arrested in the demonstrations there so far.
Photo: AFP
“It’s the same shit, it’s the same, it’s Macron who’s the problem, not the ministers,” Fred, a representative for the RATP public transportation branch of the General Confederation of Labour union said at a protest in Paris.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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