World: Tear gas, arrests in new anti-Macron demo

Clashes in Paris come as transport strike enters 45th day

French police fired tear gas under a rain of projectiles and arrested dozens of people on Saturday as thousands of “yellow vest” anti-government protesters returned to the streets of Paris.

Demonstrators shouted slogans denouncing the police, President Emmanuel Macron and his pension reforms that have triggered the longest French transport strike in decades.

The night before, Macron and his wife Brigitte had to be rushed briefly from a Paris theater after protesters tried to burst in and disrupt the performance.

With sirens wailing, riot police drove across the French capital in dozens of vans on Saturday to the route where thousands of protesters marched.

The police said 59 people had been arrested by the early afternoon.

There were further allegations of police violence after video footage shot by AFPTV and others showed a young man, his face covered in blood, being arrested and beaten.

Young people wearing masks shouted “revolution” as tear gas drifted by the Bastille, the square where the French Revolution erupted in 1789.

“The street is ours,” some protesters chanted. “Macron, we’re going to come for you, in your home.”

Saturday’s clashes came on the 45th day of a strike that has hit train and metro traffic and caused misery for millions of commuters in and around Paris in particular.

Trains are becoming more frequent however, and Paris’ metro drivers voted to suspend their action from Monday, their union UNSA announced Saturday.

The protests were also the latest of the weekly demonstrations held every Saturday by the yellow vest movement since November 2018, and which have been boosted by those opposed to the pension reforms.

“We’re suffocating with this government who wants to put us on our knees,” said Annie Moukam, a 58-yearold teacher among the protesters.

“It’s out of the question that he [Macron] touches our pensions. We have worked all our lives to be able to leave with a dignified retirement,” she added.

Macron’s reforms aim to forge a single pensions system from the country’s 42 separate regimes.

The various systems currently in place offer early retirement and other benefits to some public-sector workers as well as lawyers, physical therapists and even Paris Opera employees.

Critics say the reforms will effectively force millions of people to work longer for a smaller pension.