PARIS: Protesters clashed with security forces across France on Monday as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for Labour Day to vent their anger against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform.
Unions had been hoping for a vast turnout nationwide to further rattle Macron, who has been greeted by pot-bashing and jeers as he toured the country seeking to defend the reforms and relaunch his second term.
Macron last month signed a law to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, despite months of strikes against the bill.
At least 108 police were wounded, 25 in the capital, and 291 people detained across France — 111 in Paris — as violence erupted in several cities on the sidelines of the main union-led marches, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters. In Paris, radical protesters threw projectiles at police and broke windows of businesses such as banks and estate agents, with security forces responding with tear gas and water cannon, AFP correspondents said.
Darmanin condemned protesters he described as being from the far-left, known as “black blocs,” saying they numbered around 2,000 in Paris and another 1,000 in Lyon. He urged that “those who attacked the police and public property be severely punished.”
As police sought to disperse the protest at its end point, some individuals created a fire that spread to a building and prompted the fire service to intervene. Police had been given a lastminute go-ahead to use drones as a security measure after a Paris court rejected a petition from rights groups for them not to be used.
Security forces deployed tear gas in Toulouse in southern France as tensions erupted during demonstrations, while four cars were set on fire in the southeastern city of Lyon.
In the western city of Nantes, police also fired tear gas after protesters hurled projectiles, AFP correspondents said.
The windows of a Uniqlo clothing store were smashed. Protesters briefly occupied the luxury InterContinental hotel in the southern city of Marseille, breaking flowerpots and damaging furniture. “In many cities in France, this May Day was a moment for responsible mobilisation and commitment.
The scenes of violence on the sidelines of the demonstrations are all the more unacceptable,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on Twitter.
Darmanin added that such a high toll of police wounded was “extremely rare” for a May 1 protest day. He said one policeman who was hit by a Molotov cocktail had received burns to the face and hands but his life was not in danger.
Some 782,000 people protested across France, including 112,000 in Paris alone, the interior ministry said. The CGT union said it counted 2.3 million protesters across France, including 550,000 in the capital.
The turnout was massively higher than May Day last year but smaller than the biggest protests seen against the pension reform this year. Macron and his government have tried to move on from the months of popular discontent, hoping to relaunch his second term after the reform was signed into law.
“The page is not going to be turned as long as there is no withdrawal of this pension reform. The determination to win is intact,” said CGT chief Sophie Binet at the Paris protest. – AFP
