France protests: clashes with police in Paris and Marseille

On Saturday, protests broke out in several French cities at once, from Paris and Marseille to Lyon and Bordeaux. According to international news agencies, police used tear gas, batons and water cannon, and the demonstrations are being called the most violent in recent years.

The regions: blockades and attacks on town halls

From the morning, demonstrators gathered in Rennes and in the port of Saint-Nazaire, which was a stronghold of the “yellow vests” movement in 2018. In both cities protesters blocked roads. In Nantes, according to French media, police are regularly firing tear gas grenades from the roof of a cathedral on Place Foch.

In Marseille, shortly before noon, police dispersed an unauthorized march of 500 to 1,000 people. Some participants were detained for storming a police station, smashing windows and wrecking furniture. Other demonstrators got into the lobby of the town hall; Mayor Benoît Payan said that, at his request, additional police forces would be sent to the city.

Town halls were targeted in Grenoble too. In Lyon, the aggressive part of the crowd not only entered the town hall but also trashed and set fire to a branch of the tourist information centre. In Bordeaux, a demonstration that began calmly turned into rioting: on shopping streets in the centre, people hurled objects and tear gas grenades, and offenders broke into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Paris: arrests and “no-protest zones”

In the capital, police carrying out spot checks on the streets and at railway stations detained more than 133 people, mostly for possessing prohibited weapons. In the Réaumur-Sébastopol and Saint-Denis districts, about fifty people were dispersed after they built a barricade out of wooden barriers, set it on fire and began throwing objects at police.

Shortly after 2 p.m., an authorized march set off from Place de la République towards Place de Clichy. Even before it began, police used a water cannon against aggressive demonstrators who had set fire to a parked car and a newspaper kiosk. According to AFP, the march nevertheless began as planned, despite clashes between hundreds of people and police in the city centre.

Paris police had announced “no-protest zones” for Saturday in advance, where demonstrations were banned: railway stations, the Champs-Élysées, Place de la Concorde and Place de la Bastille, and the areas around the Interior Ministry, the police prefecture, the town hall and the Élysée Palace.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz