Protesters tear through Paris, smashing and burning stores
Along the Champs-Elysees, riot police repelled protesters with tear gas and water cannon. Massive police presence fails to prevent rioting that has rocked the city
PARIS— The rumble of armoured police trucks and the hiss of tear gas filled central Paris on Saturday, as French riot police fought to contain thousands of yellow-vested protesters venting their anger against the government in a movement that has grown more violent by the week.
A ring of steel surrounded the president’s Elysée Palace — a key destination for the protesters — as police stationed trucks and reinforced metal barriers in the neighbourhood.
Stores along the elegant Champs-Elysees Avenue and the posh Avenue Montaigne boarded up their windows as if bracing for a hurricane, but the storm struck anyway Saturday, this time at the height of the holiday shopping season. Protesters ripped off the plywood protecting the windows and threw flares and other projectiles. French riot police repeatedly repelled them with tear gas and water cannon.
Saturday’s yellow-vest crowd was overwhelmingly male, a mix of those bringing their financial grievances to Paris — the centre of France’s government, economy and culture — along with groups of experienced vandals who tore steadily through some of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, smashing and burning.
Police and protesters also clashed in other French cities, notably Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux, and in neighbouring Belgium. Some protesters took aim at the French border with Italy, creating a huge traffic backup near the town of Ventimiglia. The French government’s plan was to prevent a repeat of the Dec. 2 rioting that damaged the Arc de Triomphe, devastated central Paris and tarnished the country’s global image. It did not succeed, even though it was better prepared.
Although Saturday’s protest started out quietly, tear gas choked the Champs-Elysees Avenue by early evening.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said 135 people had been injured and 974 arrested amid protests around the nation. Paris police headquarters counted 71 injuries in the capital, seven of them police.
An estimated 125,000 people demonstrated around France while 10,000 took their anger to the streets of Paris, double the number in the capital last week.
Amid the melee, President Emmanuel Macron remained invisible and silent, as he has for the four weeks of a movement that started as a protest against a gas tax hike and metamorphosed into a rebellion against high taxes and eroding living standards.