Fuel tax rise draws protests
One protester was killed and 227 other people were injured – eight seriously – at roadblocks set up around villages, towns and cities across France yesterday as citizens angry with rising fuel taxes rose up in a grassroots movement, posing a new challenge to beleaguered President Emmanuel Macron.
Police officers lobbed tear gas canisters at demonstrators on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris as groups of ‘‘yellow jackets,’’ as the protesters called themselves, tried to make their way to the presidential Elysee Palace. Later, hundreds of protesters entered the bottom of the street dotted with luxury shops where the palace is located – and where Macron lives – before being pushed back by security forces with shields.
In a similar scene, police cleared out the huge traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, paralysed for hours by protesters.
French Interior Ministry officials counted nearly 283,000 protesters, mostly peaceful, throughout the day at more than 2000 sites, some setting bonfires or flying balloons.
However, some demonstrations turned violent. In Troyes, southeast of Paris, about 100 people invaded the prefecture, the local representation of the state, damaging the inside, Interior Ministry officials said. In Quimper, in Brittany, security forces used water cannon to disperse hostile protesters.
The protester who died, a 63-year-old woman, was killed when a driver caught in the blockade accelerated in a panic at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, near Chambery, in eastern France, according to Louis Laugier, the prefect, or top state official, in the Savoie region. A confrontation with protesters ‘‘got heated up for no reason’’ and the driver accelerated her minivan after ‘‘people started rattling her car,’’ a protester who witnessed the incident said.
An investigation into the death was opened.
Eight of the 227 people injured were in serious condition, ministry officials said at an evening briefing, without providing details. A police officer and a firefighter who intervened when protesters attacked a closed service station were among the eight.
A total of 117 people were arrested with 73 of them held for questioning.
The protesters called themselves ‘‘yellow jackets’’ because most were wearing the fluorescent yellow vests that must be kept in vehicles of all French drivers in case of car troubles.
The daughter of the woman killed called for calm as she protested in Cavaillon, in southern France.
‘‘I really want people not to let themselves become submerged by anger,’’ Alexandrine Mazet told RTL radio.
‘‘The yellow jackets must understand this is a peaceful movement,’’ she said.