At least 76 have been arrested following protests in France against pension reform, with protesters burning bins and erecting barricades.
At least 76 were arrested today following protests in France against pension reform, with protesters burning bins and erecting barricades.
At a demonstration in Paris, the police used tear gas in response to the launching of projectiles by some protesters.
After the demonstrations against pension reform on the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees in Paris were banned by the police, after two nights of protests overshadowed by incidents, some 4,000 protesters moved to the “Place d’ Italie”, in the south of the capital
There, union activists and left-wing parties mixed with protesters from outside any organization. The events that occurred led to at least 76 arrests, according to the authorities.
Various other demonstrations, many of them organized on social networks and outside of unions and parties, took place in dozens of French cities, including small and medium-sized cities such as Mulhouse (east) and Compiègne (north). In most cases, they were peaceful.
In Bordeaux, rubbish bins caught fire in a street in the city center, a fire that was quickly extinguished.
Today’s protests were added to the partial strikes organized by the unions, which had carried out dozens of demonstrations before the controversial approval of the reform of the pension system.
Trains, refineries, the gas sector and garbage collection, among others, were affected and one of the most relevant examples is the strike by cleaning services in Paris, which has been going on for almost two weeks, with thousands of tons of garbage scattered around. through the streets of the capital.
The challenge to the pension reform decided by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, took more radical contours, with young activists tired of the weekly processions and willing to toughen the fight, after the decision of the Government, this Thursday, to approve the text, resorting to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the adoption of a text without a vote, unless a motion of censure is voted in the executive.
Source: Observadora
