{"id":3244,"date":"2026-10-24T19:03:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3244"},"modified":"2026-10-24T19:03:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T14:03:49","slug":"police-fire-tear-gas-as-new-french-protests-kick-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=3244","title":{"rendered":"Police fire tear gas as new French protests kick off"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

French police started firing tear gas at protesters Saturday as they stepped up security in major cities aiming to prevent a repeat of rioting a week ago, on a day of fresh nationwide demonstrations over the high cost of living.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Police in the southeast city of Lyon fired tear gas to disperse some 150 protesters near the city centre \u2014 where demonstrations had been banned \u2014 when they briefly tried to block a road, an AFP<\/em> journalist saw.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police are really mobile\u2026 They come and disperse marches before they even form,\u201d said a 21-year-old student who had turned up to protest, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, authorities and rattled shopkeepers geared up for potential new street violence.<\/p>\n

Near Paris\u2019s Bastille neighbourhood, a clothing store had removed all its merchandise from shelves ahead of the demonstrations, while a nearby restaurant was boarded up with signs insisting it was \u201cstill open\u201d. Many other retailers in the capital also had wooden boards covering their windows.<\/p>\n

The Louvre and the Musee d\u2019Orsay museums were closed.<\/p>\n

The capital\u2019s police said at midday officers had confiscated \u201cvarious forbidden items\u201d but described the situation as \u201ccalm\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Marseille, riot squad vehicles, armoured trucks and a water cannon were parked in the city centre, while police elsewhere prepared for potential clashes.<\/p>\n

They were among 70,000 security personnel the interior ministry said were mobilised to counter the \u201chigh\u201d threat of violence.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Protest against Le Pen\u2019s party<\/h3>\n

Adding to tensions, Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally party held a congress in Orleans to launch her campaign for elections in six months to choose President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s successor.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people yelling anti-fascist slogans marched on Saturday against Le Pen, and also against Macron, a pro-business centrist leader. \u201cMacron resign. Le Pen in prison,\u201d the crowd yelled. Police put their numbers at 11,000 while organisers said 26,000 took part.<\/p>\n

The unrest highlighted tensions in France ahead of the vote, which Le Pen is best-placed, according to surveys, to win.<\/p>\n

Last weekend saw rioters on the margins of the nationwide demonstrations clash with police, vandalise public buildings and loot hundreds of stores. Some 2,700 people were arrested and the retail sector said shopowners were left with damage and stolen stock totalling hundreds of millions of euros.<\/p>\n

Macron attributed the worst of the violence to \u201cultra-left\u201d groups that he said \u201cwant to bring down the republic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Groups organising Saturday\u2019s renewed demonstrations have accused Macron and his government of ignoring widespread public anger over rising costs, and over classroom conditions for students.<\/p>\n

Inflation in France, as elsewhere, has been sent surging by the Middle East war, started in February against Iran by US President Donald Trump and Israel.<\/p>\n

Protests have also been taking place in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal over different issues, yet with some overlap on inflation and education problems. Italy has mobilised 500 troops to Milan after street violence there.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Boarded-up shops<\/h3>\n

In Paris, streets on Saturday were unusually quiet, with many shop windows boarded up, and some of the bigger retailers sent messages to customers warning that they were closed for the day.<\/p>\n

The capital\u2019s police at the last minute ordered a union-organised march in the city be moved from Bastille, in the centre-east, to the more remote eastern Porte d\u2019Italie on the southern rim of the capital.<\/p>\n

Unions said they reluctantly would go along with that.<\/p>\n

But the Yellow Vests, who staged disruptive protests against Macron eight years ago, denounced an \u201cauthoritarian drift\u201d and called for yet more demonstrations on October 31 for \u201cthe freedom to protest\u201d.<\/p>\n

A shopworker in the city of Rennes told AFP<\/em>: \u201cBans are sometimes worse. Protesting is a right, and when you ban it you make it even more tempting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macron and his government have sought to draw a line between the legitimate demands of protesters and the looting, burning and ransacking that erupted on the sidelines of demonstrations last Saturday.<\/p>\n

Courts have already sent 217 people, half of them first-time offenders, to prison over the events on Saturday, officials said.<\/p>\n

Macron has said authorities would accept only union-led demonstrations and would counter any others they deemed \u201cillegitimate\u201d.<\/p>\n

The restrictions, including outright bans on protests in some cities, have drawn criticism.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International denounced what it called \u201ca slide toward authoritarian practice\u201d, saying the measures were \u201cjeopardising the right to demonstrate peacefully\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice have a responsibility both to ensure that protests can take place peacefully and safely and to protect the public from violent disorder,\u201d said Eva Cosse, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French police started firing tear gas at protesters Saturday as they stepped up security in major cities aiming to prevent a repeat of rioting a week ago, on a day of fresh nationwide demonstrations over the high cost of living. Police in the southeast city of Lyon fired tear gas to disperse some 150 protesters near the city centre \u2014 where demonstrations had been banned \u2014 when they briefly tried to block a road, an AFP journalist saw. \u201cThe police are really mobile\u2026 They come and disperse marches before they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}