Ajit Karn
Paris: Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that 457 people were arrested and 441 security officers were hurt on Thursday during protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pensions reform. The protests took place all over France.
Darmanin also told CNews on Friday morning that 903 fires were started in the streets of Paris on what was by far the most violent day of protests since they started in January.
“There were a lot of demonstrations, and some of them turned violent, especially in Paris,” Darmanin said, calling the death toll “difficult” and thanking the police for keeping the more than a million people who marched around France safe.
Police had warned that anarchist groups might join the Paris march, and at the end of the march, young men with hoods and face masks were seen breaking windows and setting fire to trash that hadn’t been picked up.
Darmanin, a hardliner on the right in Macron’s center-left government, told protesters that the pensions reform, which was passed by parliament last week in a controversial way, should stay.
“I don’t think violence is a reason to get rid of this law,” he said. “Then there’s no state, if that’s the case. We should be open to a fair, social discussion, but not one that gets violent.”
In another place on Thursday, the door to the city hall in Bordeaux, which is a hub for shipping wine, was set on fire during fighting.
Pierre Hurmic, the mayor of Bordeaux, told RTL radio on Friday, “I find it hard to understand and accept this kind of vandalism.”
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“Why would you make our public building a target, of all the people in Bordeaux? I can’t say anything but the worst things about it.”
Next Tuesday, British King Charles III will visit the city in the southwest. He was supposed to go to the city hall and meet with Hurmic.
