1,300 Arrested, 50 Police Hurt in French Protest Clashes

French police arrested 1,314 people during weekend demonstrations, while 53 officers were injured in clashes, authorities said.

The arrests came after violence erupted on the edges of mass protests in several major cities on Saturday, as demonstrators rallied against the rising cost of living.

It was the second straight weekend of unrest in France, which is preparing for presidential elections in April and May. Voters will choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron, who is barred from seeking a third term.

Marine Le Pen is due to address 10,000 members of her National Rally (RN) party in Orleans this afternoon, following another day of protests that swept across France and descended into violence.

The far-right candidate is seeking to replace President Macron and is leading the race in opinion polls.

The unrest of recent weeks is widely seen as helping Le Pen’s campaign. She has repeatedly accused Macron’s centrist government of showing weakness toward violent protesters and failing to maintain order.

More than 400,000 people marched through major French cities on Saturday to voice anger over the soaring cost of living. In several locations, masked youths broke away from the crowds and confronted police, who used tear gas and water cannon.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said late Saturday that officers had faced “an extremely elevated level of violence” from black-clad “ultra-left” extremists who had joined the demonstrations.

The Interior Ministry said police dealt with 75 fires during Saturday’s demonstrations and reported that 24 shops had been looted.

“Several investigations have been opened,” the ministry said in a statement, without providing further details. It added that the remainder of the night was “calm” after the clashes subsided.

The ministry’s Sunday statement did not specify how many protesters had been injured.

However, Nunez said late Saturday that two protesters had suffered serious injuries—one in Toulouse and another in Clermont-Ferrand.

The Toulouse prefecture, which reports to the Interior Ministry, said a 20-year-old man had sustained a serious hand injury.

A street medic who treated demonstrators said, speaking anonymously, that the man had lost “several fingers” from his right hand.

Officials in the Clermont-Ferrand area said another man had injured his hand, but had not lost any fingers.

Regional newspaper La Nouvelle Republique reported that a man in Poitiers had suffered an eye injury and published a photograph showing him holding his face.

The newspaper’s photographer said he was a 19–year–old who was wounded during a charge by riot police firing stun grenades and tear gas.

There have been several instances in recent weeks, during student protests in France, of people being maimed by police stun grenades or tear gas grenades.

It was not known if the injuries reported from Saturday were from those police weapons. Officials said investigations had been opened in at least some of the cases.

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A week earlier, on October 17, similar nationwide marches took place, also against rising inflation sent surging by the war in the Middle East. 

These, too, degenerated into street violence, with public buildings vandalised and hundreds of shops looted.

The mass rallies were fed by four weeks of student protests across France, over classroom conditions and access to university places, which at times also descended into clashes.

Unions and Yellow Vest protesters have vowed to keep up their street marches in the weeks ahead, pointing to a febrile period as the elections draw near.

Police were on Sunday filtering traffic going into Orleans, after thousands of counter–protesters opposed to Le Pen and her anti–immigration, nationalist RN marched in the city on Saturday chanting anti–fascist slogans.

Police put their numbers at 13,000, while organisers estimated the turnout at twice that.  

Despite the protests, polling has shown French voters, angry over Macron’s perceived detachment over his two terms and his recent orders to curb the protests, are turning to more extremist politics.

An Ipsos survey published Saturday suggested Le Pen would score 32 to 34 percent of the vote in the first round of the election, with a far–left rival, Jean–Luc Melenchon, getting 17 percent. Centrist candidates from mainstream parties trailed them.

Asked about the protest violence, a majority of the 1,500 people questioned in the survey – 58 percent – said they felt anger.

It found 81 percent believed the government was ‘responsible for this situation’, while 79 percent thought radical political groups were, 62 percent blamed the left, and 52 percent blamed the police.

If Le Pen wins the two–stage presidential elections in April and May, she has vowed to cut the cost of living through capped household energy bills, reduced taxes and trimming France’s contribution to the European Union.

She is also critical of NATO, and of France’s support of Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.

The RN, which portrays itself as a party of law and order, has also sided strongly with the police in the current unrest.

The head of Le Pen’s party, Jordan Bardella, whom she intends to make prime minister if she becomes president, has visited police stations to underline that credential. 

Regardless, whoever wins the presidency will find limited room to throw money around to placate various clamouring interest groups.

France’s public debt and budget deficit have climbed well beyond the ceilings EU member countries are meant to stick to.

Macron’s government is trying to get a cost–cutting budget adopted, but faces headwinds from both the sustained protests demanding more spending and the political jockeying by parties eyeing power.

As Macron sees out the final months of his presidency, he has to tread a line between cracking down on street violence and opening dialogue with unions, students and other groups to attempt to restore order.

Although the French president has not invoked a state of emergency, he has ordered bans on non–union demonstrations deemed ‘illegitimate’, and officials under him have imposed bans on protests in city centres and localised curfews in certain zones.

Many protesters on Saturday raged against the measures, describing them as an assault on the French right to protest.

The Yellow Vest movement, which challenged Macron eight years ago with street disruptions, has called for another day of protests next Saturday.

And the powerful CGT union, prominent in the demonstrations, is urging a campaign of strikes starting from November 5.

READ MORE: French riot police hit far–Left mobs with water cannon as protests continue for second weekend