‘Yellow vest’ protest wanes; 10th death
TOULOUSE/PARIS: France’s antiGovernment ‘‘yellow vest’’ protest was losing steam on Saturday but caused traffic disruption through road blocks across the country, leading to the death of a 10th person since the start of the movement last month.
The turnout on the streets of Paris and other cities was smaller than in previous weekends, authorities said. No major damage or clashes had been reported between police and protesters as of midafternoon.
About 23,800 people were demonstrating at 1pm local time, including fewer than 1000 in Paris, the interior ministry said. That was down from the same time a week ago, when there were 33,500 protesters out on the streets, 2200 of them in Paris.
Authorities had expected a march in Versailles, whose castle is a symbol of French state power and one of Europe’s top tourist attractions.
But few ‘‘gilets jaunes’’ (yellow vest) protesters — socalled after the highvisibility jackets French motorists must carry in their cars — showed up in the former royal city.
Dispersed groups of protesters were out on the streets of Paris near tourist landmarks such as the Sacre Coeur Basilica and the Galeries Lafayette department stores, singing La Marseillaise and calling for President Emmanuel Macron’s resignation.
Attendance was on the rise, however, in Lyon and Bordeaux, according to Reuters witnesses. Protesters also managed to block some of the big highways, including one leading to Spain.
Late on Friday (local time), a 36yearold man died in Perpignan, southern France, when his car hit a truck at a road block erected by protesters, raising the death toll linked to the demonstrations to 10.
On Saturday, police fired tear gas against protesters who gathered near Macron’s villa in the chic resort of Le Touquet in northern France.
In the French capital, the police arrested 109 protesters, seven of whom were held in custody.
Three weeks ago, the protests in Paris turned into some of the worst unrest seen in the capital since the studentled civil unrest of 1968.
The ‘‘yellow vest’’ protesters began in midNovember to rally against fuel tax increases and subsequently against the wider liberal economic reform policy of Macron. — Reuters