Armored vehicles deployed in Paris as France hit by fresh ‘yellow vest’ protests
Around 700 detained in latest wave of demonstrations sparked by raising of fuel taxes; Trump says unrest due to Paris climate accord
PARIS — Armored vehicles rolled through central Paris on Saturday as riot police clashed with “yellow vest” demonstrators, who set fire to barricades and hurled rocks in the latest demonstrations against French President Emmanuel Macron.
Shouts of “Macron, resign” mingled with tear gas on the Champs-Elysees avenue, which was the scene of the worst rioting in Paris in decades last week.
Thick plumes of black smoke from fires could be seen rising high into the sky over the city.
Government calls for protesters to stay away from “Act IV” of a battle that began over fuel prices but ballooned into an anti-Macron revolt fell on deaf ears, with demonstrators making their way to Paris from across the country.
In the Grands Boulevards shopping district, masked protesters threw rocks at riot police and set fire to a barricade hastily assembled from stolen dustbins and Christmas trees.
Denis, a 30-year-old forklift driver from the Normandy port of Caen, traveled to Paris for the first time Saturday to make his voice heard after three weeks at the barricades in the provinces.
“I’m here for my 15-month-old son. I can’t let him live in a country where the poor are exploited,” he told AFP.
The demonstrators began blockading roads over rising fuel taxes on November 17 but their list of demands have since grown, with many calling for the resignation of Macron, whom they accuse of favoring the rich.
Coordinated “yellow vest” protests were taking place across the country on Saturday, including on numerous highways, causing havoc on the national road network.
Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said an estimated 31,000 people were taking part in protests nationwide, including 8,000 in Paris — similar numbers to last week.
Around 700 people had been detained, most of them in Paris.
Police carried out checks on people arriving at the capital’s train stations, confiscating items that could be used as projectiles as well as surgical masks and goggles used to protect against the effects of tear gas.
Some of those arrested were carrying hammers, slingshots and rocks.
But many of the demonstrators insisted they wanted no violence.
Parts of the city center were on effective lockdown, with shops, museums, the Eiffel Tower and many metro stations closed. Top-flight soccer matches and concerts were cancelled.
Last weekend’s violence, which saw some 200 cars torched and the Arc de Triomphe vandalized, shook France and plunged Macron’s government into its deepest crisis so far.
“These past three weeks have produced a monster that its creators no longer control,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said Friday, vowing “zero tolerance” towards those aiming to wreak further destruction.
‘We await Mr Macron’
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Friday evening met a delegation of self-described “moderate” yellow vests who urged people not to join the protests.
A spokesman from the movement, Christophe Chalencon, said Philippe had “listened to us and promised to take our demands to the president.”
“Now we await Mr Macron. I hope he will speak to the people of France as a father, with love and respect and that he will take strong decisions,” he said.
Philippe said some 89,000 police had been mobilized across France on Saturday, including 8,000 police in Paris, where a dozen armored vehicles were being deployed for the first time in decades.
Shops around the Champs-Elysees boarded up their windows and emptied them of merchandise on Friday, while the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay and other museums were shut.
Department stores were also closed due to the risk of looting on what would normally be a busy shopping weekend in the run-up to Christmas.
Foreign governments are watching developments closely in one of the world’s most visited cities.
The US embassy issued a warning to Americans in Paris to “keep a low profile and avoid crowds,” while Belgium, Portugal and the Czech Republic advised citizens to postpone any planned visits.
Macron’s U-turn
Macron this week gave in to some of the protesters’ demands for measures to help the poor and struggling middle classes, including scrapping a planned increase in fuel taxes and freezing electricity and gas prices in 2019.
But the “yellow vests,” some of whom who have become increasingly radicalized, are holding out for more.
Protests at dozens of schools over university reforms, and a call by farmers for demonstrations next week, have added to a sense of general revolt.
The hardline CGT union, hoping to capitalize on the movement, has called for rail and metro strikes next Friday to demand immediate wage and pension increases.
‘President of the rich’
Macron’s decision early in his presidency to slash taxes on France’s wealthiest is particularly unpopular with the protesters.
Arguing that such a move was necessary in order to boost investment and create jobs, the former investment banker has so far ruled out re-imposing the “fortune tax.”
But the policy, along with hikes on pensioners’ taxes, cuts in housing allowances and a string of comments deemed insensitive to ordinary workers, has led critics to label him a “president of the rich.”
Macron had previously vowed to stay the course in his bid to shake up the French economy and not be swayed by mass protests that have forced previous presidents to back down.
The climbdown on higher fuel taxes — which were intended to help France transition to a greener economy — marked a major departure for the centrist president.
Trump weighs in
US President Donald Trump commented on the fresh wave of protests, using them to attack the Paris agreement on fighting climate change and citing them as proof that he was right to reject the pact.
His Saturday morning tweet came in the middle of UN climate talks in Poland, where nearly 200 nations have gathered to agree on a universal rulebook to make good on the promises they signed up to in the 2015 Paris climate deal.
“The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France,” Trump said.
“People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment.”
Saturday’s comment was not the first time Trump had used the “yellow vest” protests to slam the climate deal.
On Tuesday, he called the Paris agreement “fatally flawed.”
Trump has long said he distrusts the consensus by nearly all the world’s respected climate scientists on the link between human activity and rising temperatures, as well as other damaging climate change phenomena.
Since becoming president in January 2017, he has pulled the United States out of the international Paris Agreement on attempting to bring down global temperatures, and torn up a raft of environmental protection laws, saying the US economy needs the boost.
Late last month, Trump’s own government issued a dire report warning of massive economic losses if carbon emissions continue to feed climate change unchecked, but the US leader said he didn’t believe the findings.
