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Macron under pressure to act as Paris cleans up after latest protests Macron to appeal to French in wake of latest violent protests
(about 4 hours later)
Emmanuel Macron is facing mounting pressure to act to quell the anger dividing France after the latest gilets jaunes protests left 71 people injured in Paris and caused widespread damage. Emmanuel Macron is set to address the French people early this week after a fourth weekend of violence on the streets of major cities left the president under intense pressure to prove to protesters his government, accused of being arrogant and out of touch, is listening and to stop further destruction.
Paris monuments, including the Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum, reopened on Sunday as workers and shop owners started cleaning up after the protests. As France cleaned up after another day of civil unrest sparked by the gilets jaunes movement against the rising cost of living, the country was counting the cost of what ministers described as a social and economic catastrophe.
The government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said Macron would “make important announcements” in the week ahead. “However, not all the problems of the ‘yellow vest’ protesters will be solved by waving a magic wand,” he told LCI television. On Sunday, lorries towed away burned out cars and motorcycles, shops removed boardings from their windows and council workers cleaned up the detritus of rioting and looting.
The interior ministry said 1,220 people were taken into custody around the country during the latest protests. In Paris, which was worst hit, police had prevented a concentration of violence and destruction around the Champs Élysées, but in doing so dispersed pockets of protesters around the capital causing more widespread chaos and damage.
Shop owners in Paris assessed looting damage and cleared away broken glass, after shutting down on Saturday at the height of the Christmas shopping season. But fierce winds and rain overnight hampered efforts to clean up while used teargas canister lids lay scattered on the cobblestones of the Champs Élysées. Much of the destruction was caused by gangs of “casseurs”, urban guerrillas determined to loot and pillage, some of whom were wearing gilets jaunes. Among the “yellow vest” protestors were black-clad and masked youths who, the authorities suggested, belonged to ultra-right, ultra-left, or anarchist groups.
Macron broke his silence after a day of protests late on Saturday evening to thank the security forces. About 8,000 police and gendarmes were deployed in a massive show of strength in the French capital with a total force of 89,000 deployed across France. French security forces, using armoured vehicles and water cannon, were more mobile and reactive than in previous weeks, but Paris authorities said there had been “much more damage”.
Macron tweeted: “Thank you for the courage and exceptional professionalism you have shown.” “The sector concerned by the incidents was much larger. With fewer barricades, the protests were more dispersed so many more places were affected by the violence,” Emmanuel Gregoire, a Paris deputy mayor, told France Inter radio.
“There was much more damage yesterday than there was a week ago.”
Violence also broke out at gilets jaunes demonstrations in Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Dijon and Toulouse during a fourth weekend of nationwide protests.
The president, who has remained silent during the protests – reportedly for fear of inflaming the situation – tweeted on Saturday: “To all the forces of order mobilised today, thank you for the courage and exceptional professionalism you have shown.”
À toutes les forces de l’ordre mobilisées aujourd’hui, merci pour le courage et l’exceptionnel professionnalisme dont vous avez fait preuve.À toutes les forces de l’ordre mobilisées aujourd’hui, merci pour le courage et l’exceptionnel professionnalisme dont vous avez fait preuve.
The French prime minister, Édouard Phillipe, said Macron would soon put forward measures to foster discussion with the protesters, adding: “No tax should jeopardise our national unity. We must now rebuild that national unity through dialogue, through work, and by coming together.” The response is unlikely to placate protesters, who chanted “Macron demission!” (Macron resign) at demonstrations across the country.
In a change of tactics from last week, when Paris saw the worst violence for more than 50 years, police and gendarmes chose to directly confront troublemaking demonstrators. The ministry of the interior said 136,000 people took part in what the gilets jaunes had labelled “Act IV” of their campaign of action, a number similar to the previous week.
Stung by criticism that they lost control of the situation last week, politicians and police were reactive and mobile, determined not to let casseurs – vandals and hooligans – have their way again. On Saturday morning whole districts of the city were put into lockdown, with roads sealed off in an effort to contain protesters to the Champs Élysées. Police arrested 1,723 people, of whom 1,220 remained in custody overnight, 900 of them in Paris. This was more than four times as many as the previous week. Officials said 264 people were injured; including 39 police and gendarmes and several journalists. Many of the injuries were caused by the security forces firing flash-ball-style grenades at the crowds.
As the day wore on, groups of casseurs had police racing to deal with fires and barricades. Officers responded with water cannon and teargas. In Bordeaux, there were 44 arrests after violent clashes between police and demonstrators in which 26 people were injured, including a man who lost a hand after reportedly picking up a crowd control grenade to throw it back. Local prosecutor Olivier Etienne said the man was seriously injured.
Groups of young men dressed in black and wearing masks and scarves dodged the security forces and teargas to build barricades and set fires around the city. In Toulouse, where protesters set fire to barricades and threw projectiles at the police, the authorities blamed several hundred “casseurs” for the violence.
Police sources said they believed the “real” gilets jaunes had again been hijacked by extreme elements, including ultras from the left and right and anarchist “black bloc” groups. In other parts of the country, the “real” gilets jaunes seemed determined to protest peacefully. Even those businesses that escaped damage were counting the cost of having to close on what would normally be one of the busiest shopping days of the year. On Saturday, Paris’s main department stores, Galeries Lafayette, Printemps and BHV turned off their Christmas lights, boarded up their seasonal window displays and shut up shop.
Marc, 31, a farmworker from Normandy, said he had “had enough of paying high taxes” but was not planning to get into a fight with police. “There are troublemakers here, and I get the impression some of them may be anarchists or extremists or ultras, but I don’t know.,” he said. The finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said the civil unrest was a “catastrophe for our business and a catastrophe for our economy”. He spoke of a “social crisis, a democratic crisis and a crisis for the nation”.
“But there’s something not right here: if we demonstrate peacefully, the government ignores us. If some people burn cars and attack the police, the government gives in. What does that tell us?” On Sunday, the French government also responded to tweets by Donald Trump apparently gloating over the violence in Paris and attacking the Paris agreement aimed at addressing climate change.
The number of injured in Paris and nationwide was down on Saturday from last week’s protests, but the exceptional police deployment failed to deter demonstrators. About 125,000 gilets jaunes took to the streets around France putting forward a number of demands. “The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France,” Trump wrote.
Rioting spread to Belgium on Saturday, with police firing tear gas and water cannons at gilets jaunes. Protesters in Brussels, calling for the resignation of the prime minister, Charles Michel, threw paving stones, road signs, fireworks, flares and other projectiles at police. Speaking to French television, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign and European affairs minister, bluntly told the American president to mind his own business.
In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, a few hundred protesters wearing yellow vests marched while singing and handing flowers to passersby. Another 100 protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside the Dutch parliament at The Hague. “We do not take domestic American politics into account and we want that to be reciprocated. I say this to Donald Trump and the French president says it too: leave our nation be,” he said.
The gilets jaunes protests were sparked by an eco-tax on fuel due to come into effect in January and are named after the yellow high-visibility vests French motorists are obliged to carry in their vehicles in case of an emergency.
The government dropped the eco-tax last week, but the protest movement has ballooned into a more general protest against high taxes, the rising cost of living, poverty with the country’s leaders criticised as elitist, arrogant and out of touch.
The movement, which spread quickly on Facebook and social media, now appears to encompass what some are calling “real” gilets jaunes, “casseurs”, as well as fringe elements from the political extremes. There are fears the violence is being stoked on social media by Russia-based accounts.
Negotiating with the gilets jaunes has been hampered because there is no official organisation or leadership.
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