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Gilets jaunes protesters turn out in Paris for fifth weekend Gilets jaunes protesters take to the streets of Paris for fifth weekend
(35 minutes later)
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of French cities in the fifth weekend of nationwide demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron’s government, despite calls to hold off after a gun attack in Strasbourg earlier this week. France saw a fifth weekend of protests by defiant gilets jaunes who ignored government calls to stay home following this week’s attack on Strasbourg’s Christmas market.
Police were out in force in Paris to contain possible outbreaks of violence, but several major stores, including Galeries Lafayette, were open to Christmas shoppers. In Paris hundreds gathered at the Champs-Elysées and at Place de l’Opéra, though the authorities said the numbers were well down on previous weeks.
At both sites, demonstrators found themselves facing a massive show of strength from the security services. Protesters were searched as riot police, gendarmes with armoured vehicles, mounted police and plainclothed police encircled, refusing to allow them to disperse en masse down spur roads.
Some gilets jaunes attempted to bring a festive note to the gatherings; at Opéra there was a Santa gilet jaune and another protester dressed as a cockerel. On the Champs-Elysées, members of a nude performance group painted silver and wearing red Phrygian caps – a symbol of liberty and the republic – engaged in a silent face-off with riot police.
If you want to understand the gilets jaunes, get out of Paris | Nora BensaâdouneIf you want to understand the gilets jaunes, get out of Paris | Nora Bensaâdoune
.Teargas was fired at small groups of protesters in brief clashes with riot police near the Champs Élysées, but a police source said there were fewer protesters than last Saturday. It has been a long week for Emmanuel Macron who, hours after trying to diffuse the most explosive crisis of his 18 months in office by making concessions to the gilets jaunes, was dealing with a suspected terrorist attack on Strasbourg’s celebrated Christmas market.
A handful of topless activists from the feminist protest group Femen faced security forces a few meters away from the Élysée Palace, the president’s residence. On Tuesday, a sombre Macron, accused by gilets jaunes of being arrogant and out of touch, announced a €15bn (£13.4bn) package of concessions including a rise in the minimum wage in a televised address to the nation.
The gilet jaunes or yellow vests movement started in mid-November with protests at junctions and roundabouts against fuel tax increases, but quickly became a wider mobilisation against the French president’s economic policies. Twenty-four hours later in Strasbourg, a 29-year-old man shot at crowds and stabbed passersby, killing four and injuring a dozen others. The suspect disappeared for 48 hours before being spotted in a south-east district of the city and was shot dead by police.
Successive weekends of protests in Paris have led to vandalism and violent clashes with security forces. The government had asked protesters to suspend their planned “Act Five” in the wake of the Strasbourg attack. On Saturday, across the country, thousands ignored it.
Loic Bollay, 44, marching on the Champs Élysées, said the protests were more subdued than in previous weeks but that the movement would go on until the demonstrators’ grievances were addressed. Hélène Dejesse, 60, an artist, had travelled from Charente in south-west France to attend Saturday’s protest in Paris, saying she was “not interested” in Macron’s concessions.
“Since the Strasbourg attack, it is calmer, but I think next Saturday and the following Saturdays ... it will come back.” “We’re not letting anything go … I’m here today and I’ll be protesting over Christmas and as long as it takes. For 40 years I have worked and have had a hatred of the state. As a freelancer, I have the right to pay taxes and get nothing back in return. The state has crushed us. When this movement started I saw it as a means of expressing that hatred,” she said.
“There would have been many more of us here, but they were stopping gilets jaunes from getting on the train. They will say the movement is running out of steam, but that’s because people couldn’t get here.”
The gilets jaunes began as a grass-roots movement and was initially sparked by a new eco-tax, since dropped. It has morphed into a vehicle for the expression of anti-government and anti-Macron anger.
In past weeks, protests have degenerated into running battles between protesters and police, and seen fringe elements torch cars, smash and loot shops and businesses, and deface public monuments.
Without any structure or official leaders, it has been difficult to establish what gilets jaunes want and who the government can negotiate with.
On Saturday, one branch of the movement La France en Colère (Angry France) issued widely acclaimed demands for France to be governed by RIC (Référendum d’Initiative Citoyenne, or Citizens’ Initiative Referendum), for the French constitution to be rewritten to allow greater political power to the people and a reduction in tax on essential goods, including food, heating, water and clothing.
“Our elected representatives need to be controlled when they betray us,” Dejesse said.
Guillaume Deselly, also an artist from Charentes, blamed the French government for encouraging protester violence.
“They let the casseurs (vandals) do what they like so they can discredit the gilets jaunes movement,” he said.
Nurses Sophie Portejoie, 45, Christelle Tesson, 49, health assistant Virginie Rabaud, 32, and student Ophélie Joaquim, 22, had come in from the Essonne, just south of Paris.
“We’re pacifists and of course we’re afraid there might be violence, but we have come anyway, otherwise we will gain nothing in life. We’re fighting against precarity,” Portejoie said.
“There’s too much injustice between those at the top of society and those at the bottom.”
Tesson added: “We’re doing this for our children. Mine are both in work but they have small salaries with which to pay big rents and charges. It’s one tax after another. We can take no more.”
Speaking from the European council on Friday, Macron called for an end to the street protests.
“Our country needs calm, needs order, needs to return to normal,” he said. He called on demonstrators to “sign up to the democratic process”.
The Paris police prefecture said there were 2,200 demonstrators in Paris on Saturday, well down on previous weeks, and well outnumbered by the 8,000 members of the security forces.
The gilets jaunes have cowed Macron. But for them, that’s just the start | John LichfieldThe gilets jaunes have cowed Macron. But for them, that’s just the start | John Lichfield
The interior minister said around 69,000 police were active on Saturday with a reinforced presence in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Saint-Étienne. At Place de l’Opéra there was a minute’s silence for the victims of the Strasbourg attack.
A police source said 16,000 protesters had been counted across the country, excluding Paris, by 1100 GMT, compared to 22,000 at the same time on 8 December. Outside of Paris, gilets jaunes maintained their protests and blockades on many roundabouts outside cities and there were demonstrations in Bordeaux, Marseille and Rennes, though again, police said numbers were well down.
In Paris, where groups of hundreds of protesters marched in splintered groups in several neighbourhoods, 85 had been arrested by around midday, according to a police official.
Macron called on Friday for a return to calm in France after nearly a month of protests that have hit growth and caused widespread disruption. “France needs calm, order and a return to normal,” he said after a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels.
In a televised address to the nation on Monday, he announced wage rises for the poorest workers and tax cuts for pensioners in further concessions meant to end the movement, but many said they would maintain the pressure.
The government and several unions and opposition politicians called on protesters to stay off the streets on Saturday, after four people were killed in a gun attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg.
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