Demonstrations of November 5: 70,000 police and gendarmes mobilized, declares Nuñez

Some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes will be mobilized on Thursday in France in view of the national call for a strike launched by the country's main unions to defend wages and employment, said Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. “It is exactly the same” system “as that of October 31,” explained the minister on Wednesday during a press point at Place Beauvau, promising “an extremely firm response” to possible “exactions” and “excesses.”

The minister identified three risks out of the 220 actions announced: “black blocs”, “wild processions” and “looting and damage to businesses or public buildings”. As in previous weeks, Beauvau therefore called on elite units, such as the RAID, the GIGN and the BRI, as well as the “26 Centaure armored vehicles” of the gendarmerie, around “fifteen water-throwing devices”, helicopters, drones, etc.

A “mobile” device

“It’s a big device, it’s a substantial device (...), a device which will be divisible, mobile, extremely agile,” assured Laurent Nuñez, who also announced “upstream checks, in-depth checks which will be carried out on all road axes, all railway axes, in stations (...), everywhere on the national territory, so as to be able to hinder people who may have bad intentions”. “The response, if there were to be desires, desires for exactions, will be extremely firm, extremely firm,” he insisted. “We will not tolerate excesses, there will be arrests,” he warned. “This day of the 5th is an important meeting for trade union organizations. She must remain calm. If this should not be the case, our response will be extremely firm,” he continued.

During the first day of national mobilization on October 17 at the call of the yellow vests, trade union organizations and student and high school movements, 60,000 internal security forces were mobilized. Numerous lootings and abuses were committed on the sidelines of this mobilization, notably in Paris, Marseille and Lyon, including the next day, and nearly 3,000 businesses were then vandalized. On October 31, 291 actions had been counted in France, bringing together according to sources between 320,000 and 500,000 people, including between 70,000 and 200,000 in Paris. 779 people were arrested throughout the country “without any major incident”.