Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
May Day marchers, police clash in Paris
France on edge as election nears; thousands rally elsewhere on workers’ day
PARIS — A May Day march attended by thousands of people in Paris was disrupted as scores of hooded youths threw gasoline bombs at riot police in full gear, who responded with tear gas and truncheons.
Four officers were injured, with one seriously burned in the face, Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said, denouncing the “intolerable violence.”
His statement said all would be done to identify and arrest those responsible.
In France, events for May Day — a day in which workers and activists rally for better pay and working conditions — overlapped with the campaign for Sunday’s presidential runoff. Some of the violent protesters at the May Day event in Paris had signs referring to the presidential election and expressing dissatisfaction with both candidates — far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron.
“Not one or the other; instead it’s the people’s self-defense,” read one sign. “Macron=Louis XVI, Le Pen=Le Pen,” read another, referring to France’s last king and to Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom Marine Le Pen expelled from the party in 2015 after he made anti-Semitic comments.
Jobs and finances were on the minds of many in France on Monday. Le Pen, speaking in a hall north of Paris, skewered Macron, a former investment banker, calling him a “puppet” of the world of finance and Islamic fundamentalists. She also pledged that if she is elected, she will work to drop the shared euro currency and return to the French franc. Under her proposal, international companies could continue to use the euro, while average citizens would use the franc.
Macron, meanwhile, is campaigning on pro-European, pro-free market views.
Elsewhere, police in Istanbul detained 165 people, most of them demonstrators trying to march to a symbolic square in defiance of a ban on May Day protests there.
A security department statement said another 18 people suspected of planning illegal demonstrations and possible acts of violence on May Day were detained in separate police operations.
Turkey had declared Taksim Square off-limits to May Day demonstrations for the third year in a row. Police blocked points of entry, allowing only small groups of labor union representatives to lay wreaths at a monument on the square, where 34 people were killed on May Day in 1977, when shots were fired into the crowd from a nearby building.
Spain’s two major unions called for marches in more than 70 cities under the slogan “No More Excuses.” Unions on Monday demanded that Spain’s conservative government increase wages and pensions and roll back its labor policies that made it cheaper to fire workers.
Under conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s economy has rebounded and unemployment has dropped from 27 percent in 2013 to 19 percent, but that is still the second-highest unemployment rate in the 28-nation EU behind Greece, which faces more austerity measures imposed by bailout lenders.
In Athens, organizers planned two union rallies to protest those measures, which will include additional pension cuts and tax increases for Greeks. Greece’s largest labor union has called a general strike for May 17 to protest the austerity package.
In Germany, an estimated 10,000 people gathered in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district for a street festival, and police reported no significant incidents. However, 5,400 police officers were mobilized for late-night demonstrations — about 50 officers were hurt last year in a brief May Day clash.
In Portugal, which has Europe’s second-highest national debt behind Greece, thousands of people marched through the streets of Lisbon to push for a renegotiation of the debt and aid to workers. Portugal’s national statistics agency reported Friday that the unemployment rate had hit an 8-year low of 9.9 percent under the current center-left government, down from the high of 16.2 percent in 2013.
Other nations also reported May Day events. In Russia, a crowd that police estimated at about 130,000 people paraded across the cobblestones of Moscow’s Red Square, the site of Soviet-era May Day celebrations. The tradition was revived in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and is seen as part of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to stoke patriotism.
A second march in Moscow was led by the Communists, many of whom carried red flags with the Soviet hammer and sickle. The Communist Party still has a faction in the Russian parliament but rarely poses any opposition to the Kremlin.
And in Cuba, a protester with a U.S. flag broke through security at the May Day march — the nation’s largest annual political event. Officers eventually tackled the man and took him away as President Raul Castro watched.
Castro, 85, has said he will step down as president in February, making this his last May Day parade as head of state.