Pressure builds on Macron as Paris cleans up riot wreckage
● President finally breaks silence after 71 hurt in capital clashes
Paris tourist sites reopened, workers cleaned up broken glass and shop owners tried to put the city on its feet again yesterday, a day after running battles between yellow-vested protesters and riot police left 71 injured and caused widespread damage to the French capital.
The man at the centre of protesters’ anger, President Emmanuel Macron, broke his silence to tweet his appreciation for the police overnight, but pressure mounted on him to propose new solutions to calm the anger dividing France.
A spokesman said Macron would address the nation this evening in a speech from the Elysee Palace.
Protesters directed their anger over rising prices at Macron, who withdrew a fuel tax hike last week to try to bring calm. However, demands have multiplied during his long silence.
The number of injured in Paris and nationwide was down on Saturday from protest riots a week ago, and most of the capital remained untouched. Still, TV footage broadcast around the world of the violence in areas popular with tourists has tarnished the country’s image.
France deployed some 89,000 police but still failed to deter the protesters. Some 125,000 yellow vests took to the streets on Saturday around the country with a bevy of demands related to high living costs and a sense that Macron favours the elite and is trying to modernise the economy too rapidly.
Some 1,220 people were taken into custody around France, the Interior Ministry said – a round-up the scale of which the country hasn’t seen in years. Police frisked protesters at train stations around the country, confiscating everything from heavy metal petanque balls to tennis rackets.
The Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum reopened after closing due to Saturday’s rioting. Shops assessed the looting damage and cleared broken glass, after shutting down for a day at the height of the Christmas shopping season.
Protesters had thrown anything they could find at police and set whatever they could on fire. Used tear gas canister lids lay scattered yesterday on the cobblestones of the Champselysees.
Protesters ripped off the plywood protecting Parisi- an store windows and threw flares and other projectiles. Riot police repeatedly repelled them with tear gas and a water cannon.
Parisians lamented the damage.
“What happened yesterday and the Saturday before, it was unforgettable,” said Jeanpierre Duclos.
“It happened in a country like France that is supposed to be sophisticated, it’s unbearable and it cannot be forgiven.”
Most of the yellow vest dem- onstrators in Paris appeared to be working-class white men from elsewhere in France, angry at economic inequalities and stagnation.
Police and protesters also clashed in other French cities, notably Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux, and in neighbouring Belgium.
Some protesters on Saturday targeted the French border with Italy, creating huge traffic jams.
Some 135 people were injured nationwide, including the 71 in Paris.
Seventeen of the injured were police.
Jean-claude Delage of the Alliance police union urged the government to come up with responses to France’s “social malaise”.
He said working-class protesters were deliberately targeting high-end shops in Paris that were selling goods they could never afford.
The protests were a direct blow to Macron, who made a stunning retreat last week and abandoned the fuel tax rise that initially prompted the yellow vest protest movement a month ago.