Play store
France will deploy about 70,000 police nationwide as it braces for new protests on Saturday after some of the worst urban violence in years erupted on the sidelines of demonstrations a week ago.
Protests by high school students over learning conditions sparked a movement that has since spread nationwide, fuelled by broader anger over the rising cost of living.
About 70,000 security personnel will be deployed on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said at a news conference in Paris, warning that calls for violence and looting were circulating on social media.
The protests have come at a critical moment for France six months ahead of elections to replace President Emmanuel Macron, with a new poll underlining far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as the frontrunner and indicating her position has been strengthened by the latest events.
Adding to tensions, Le Pen is due at the weekend to host her National Rally (RN) party congress in Orleans, with thousands of supporters expected and local authorities fearing clashes as counter-protesters also head to the city south of Paris.
Macron met representatives of secondary school pupils on Friday, but they emerged from the talks urging students to keep protesting until the government put forward concrete proposals to address their demands.
Macron’s government has 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.
Courts have already sent 217 people, half of them first-time offenders, to prison over the events on Saturday, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
On Thursday, Macron called for “the utmost severity” against “acts of delinquency”, accusing “ultra-left” groups of having sought to “bring down the republic” last weekend.
An extreme-left group in western France posted on its website a call for its supporters to be “uncatchable, unpredictable, to evade the deployment” of police. Source: AFP.
