France is bracing for a fresh wave of protests, with 70,000 riot police expected on the streets after last weekend’s unrest left public buildings damaged, businesses looted and more than 2,400 people arrested.
Shopkeepers in Paris and other cities have boarded up their premises, while authorities have imposed partial curfews in some areas. Major attractions including the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Picasso Museum have closed, and a Paris Saint-Germain home match has been postponed until Monday.
The security operation comes as President Emmanuel Macron attempts to restrict demonstrations. He has said that only protests organised by recognised trade unions will be allowed to proceed, while Lyon, Nice and Montpellier have imposed complete bans.
Despite the measures, hundreds of demonstrations are expected. A website associated with the gilets jaunes movement has listed 500 protests and 200 other actions.
Orléans protest puts police on alert
In Orléans, up to 40,000 people are expected to gather against the hard-right Rassemblement National, whose leader Marine Le Pen and party president Jordan Bardella are holding a two-day congress in the city.
Shops have been protected with wooden boards, roads sealed off and 3,000 police and gendarmes deployed. The protest march has been diverted away from the historic centre, where riot police are being used to keep opposing groups apart.
The congress is intended to launch the party’s campaign to capture the French presidency next year. Protesters began arriving in the city early in the morning, while the planned route from outside its Gothic cathedral was changed amid security concerns.
In Paris, soldiers from an anti-terrorism military unit patrolled the Champs-Élysées. Police vans were deployed around the Arc de Triomphe and specialist vehicles were stationed near key government buildings.
The measures follow violence in cities across France last weekend. Town halls were raided, shops were looted and the tourist information building in Lyon and the town hall in Limoges were burned down.
More than 100 protesters and residents were injured in Paris on Saturday, according to police, although no nationwide injury figure has been released. The Interior Ministry said 997 police officers and gendarmes were injured, seven of them seriously.
Police tactics under scrutiny
Officers are also facing criticism over the use of riot-control weapons after a 17-year-old girl lost an eye during a protest in Mulhouse and a 17-year-old boy lost a hand in Saint-Étienne. Other teenagers have suffered disabling injuries during weeks of school blockades and street demonstrations.
French police use batons, tear gas, sound grenades and foam-round launchers, as well as riot shields fitted with powerful strobe lights intended to disorient protesters.
“Intermediate-force weapons are defensive response tools that allow law enforcement officers to respond to a threat in a graduated and proportionate manner,” the French National Police said in a statement.
Critics, including families of injured teenagers, argue that officers have used excessive force. Some have called for foam-round launchers, tear gas and stun grenades to be banned, repeating demands made by human rights groups since the violent gilets jaunes protests of 2018.
Amnesty International earlier this month called for a permanent ban on stun grenades, saying they can cause permanent hearing loss and life-changing injuries through blasts and shrapnel.
Jean-Marie Godard, an author specialising in France’s internal security, said the use of such weapons reflected a wider move towards keeping officers at a distance from demonstrators.
Laura Keesmann, a sociologist at the University of Antwerp who led a comparative study of policing in France, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, said officers in the other countries often engage directly with crowds to reduce tensions.
“That is just really, really not the case in France,” she said. “There’s much more of an authoritarian way of policing.”
Ms Keesmann also stressed that French police face protesters who can be unusually militant and violent. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said before last weekend’s unrest that his instructions were “very clear: the police and gendarmes should be able to use the entirety of the intermediate weapons at their disposal”.
Authorities have blamed much of the violence on far-Left radicals, accusing them of orchestrating clashes with police and attacking public buildings, while saying others used the disorder to loot businesses.
The protests began with dissatisfaction over school conditions but have broadened to include rising living costs and wider discontent with the government. Members of the gilets jaunes movement have joined students and trade unionists, as increasingly decentralised demonstrations draw a wider range of participants.
