Demonstrations: Day of protest in France: Many controls and arrests

Paris. At the beginning of the day of protests in France, the authorities carried out numerous checks and arrested 135 people. According to French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, there were no major incidents in the first half of the day.

According to the minister, there were more than 1,000 checks in the Paris region. Many dangerous items were seized - boules balls, slingshots and an airsoft gun. The controls were “extremely productive,” said Nuñez. We remain extremely cautious and are still far from the end of the day.

Before the start of the large demonstrations, such as those in Paris, which started in the afternoon, 35,000 people were counted in public spaces, the minister continued. Last Saturday there were 60,000 people at that time. Nuñez pointed out that there was a significantly increased police presence. He had previously announced the deployment of 70,000 officers on the streets.

The young people who have been demonstrating for weeks for better equipment in schools have been joined by other groups, among other things to demonstrate against the high cost of living. Due to fears of riots and looting, such as those recorded on the sidelines of the rallies last weekend, there were bans on gatherings in certain zones and curfews in several cities.

Rallies that are accompanied by the organizers with a security service would be permitted, “and provided that they obviously do not take place in places where looting, disruption of public order and the like could occur,” the Interior Minister announced.

In Marseille, the prefecture exceptionally approved a trade union demonstration after initially banning all gatherings. In Lyon, demonstrations were banned in large parts of the city center. In Nice, where all gatherings are banned according to the prefecture, police forces, gendarmes and special forces were deployed in the city center.

The unions were outraged by the fact that the demonstration they had registered in Paris was moved from the prefecture to the outskirts of the city. The demonstration, which was organized on the initiative of the CGT trade union federation, was actually supposed to move between the central square of the Bastille and the Square of the Nation. However, the administrative court confirmed the prefecture's route in an emergency decision.

In the tense situation in the country, particular attention was paid to the city of Orléans, where the party conference of the right-wing national Rassemblement National (RN) is taking place this weekend. According to the prefecture, 11,000 people gathered there at lunchtime to protest. 3,000 security and rescue workers were mobilized over the weekend.

The tense situation in France was further fueled on Friday by an act of violence, although there was no direct connection to the social protests and unrest in the country. A man fired an automatic weapon from a car in communities near Paris. One person was killed and five others were injured. The man was arrested a short time later. People from his family and friends were also taken into police custody. President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “racist terrorist attack”.