Protests turn more violent
135 injured and 974 arrested nationwide
The rumble of armoured police trucks and the hiss of tear gas filled central Paris yesterday, 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 Elysee Palace — a key destination for the protesters — as police stationed trucks and reinforced metal barriers throughout the neighbourhood.
Stores along the elegant ChampsElysees Avenue and the posh Avenue Montaigne boarded up windows but protesters ripped off the plywood protecting the windows and threw flares and other projectiles. Riot police repeatedly repelled them with tear gas and water cannon.
The yellow-vest crowd was overwhelmingly male, a mix of those bringing their financial grievances to Paris and groups of experienced vandals who tore 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 December 2 rioting that damaged the Arc de Triomphe, devastated central Paris and tarnished the country’s image. It did not succeed, even though it was better prepared.
Although yesterday’s protest in the French capital 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 taken into custody amid protests around the nation. Paris police counted 71 injuries, seven of them police officers.
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, the interior minister said.
A Starbucks near the ChampsElysees was smashed open and people were seen stepping over broken glass and serving themselves to beverages. The window of a nearby bank was smashed in with a wroughtiron decoration used to encircle city tree trunks.
All of the city’s top tourist attractions — including the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum — shut down for the day. Christmas markets and football matches were cancelled.
Subway stations in the city centre closed and the US embassy warned citizens to avoid protest areas.
Yet in a sign of the financial disconnect that infuriates many protesters, a few blocks from the famed boulevard people were sitting in cafes, drinking cocktails and chatting.
Amid the melee, President Emmanuel Macron remained silent, as he has for the four weeks of a movement that started as a protest against a gas tax hike and became a rebellion against high taxes and eroding living standards.
The mayor of the city of SaintEtienne, a town in southeast France hit by violence yesterday, castigated Macron for failing to speak out, saying it “feeds the resentment”.
“This silence becomes contempt for the nation,” the mayor, Gael Perdriau, of the opposition conservative party, said on BFMTV.
“He has a direct responsibility in what is happening. He can’t remain closed up in the Elysee.”
The protesters have political stances ranging from the far right to the far left but the leaderless group is united in its sense Macron and his Government are out of touch.
“We are here to tell [Macron] our discontent. Me, I’m not here to break things because I have four children,” said protester Myriam Diaz.
“But I still want to be here to say ‘Stop, that’s enough.”’
Some protesters sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, as they confronted phalanxes of police in heavy riot gear. One protester in Paris showed an Associated Press reporter a fresh wound on his jaw, saying a rubber bullet fired by charging police had glanced his face.
“I was running with my hands up. They charged,” said Ludovic, a 38-year-old cabinetmaker from the eastern city of Colmar. He only gave his first name, saying he feared being tracked by security authorities. He said he was fleeing the ChampsElysees, choked with tear gas, when police moved in.
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