French Police Detain Nearly 1,000 on Second Saturday

Protesters who marched through French cities on Saturday faced a security apparatus built to keep the day's gatherings from turning into the widespread destruction of the previous weekend. Police used tear gas and water cannon to push back crowds in Paris and other cities after dark, while barricades burned in Marseille and a shop's boards were pulled down in Bordeaux. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said late in the day that nearly 1,000 people had been arrested and that the figure would rise. He said two people were seriously injured, one in Toulouse and the other in Clermont-Ferrand.

Turnout estimates split sharply. The interior ministry counted 410,000 participants while unions put the number at around 800,000. Roughly 70,000 police officers worked the marches, and restrictions were placed in several cities. In Paris, the operation included an elite unit assigned to organized crime and counter-terrorism work. Trouble started at the end of a peaceful march from Porte d'Italie toward Porte de Vincennes, where some people built makeshift barricades and threw projectiles. Officers charged with batons at masked youths who were breaking windows at a car dealership. Nuñez said that "several thousand radical activists gathered at the rear of the march, including around 500 individuals identified as rioters", according to AFP.

President Emmanuel Macron had decreed earlier in the week that only demonstrations organized by recognized trade unions could proceed. Hundreds of people have been jailed for vandalism, arson and looting after fast-track court hearings in recent days. In Lyon, police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd that had gathered in an area the local prefecture had declared off-limits. "There were around 150 of us, mostly secondary school and university students," one protester said. "You could barely see anything in the street."

The Saturday marches followed the demonstrations of October 17, when about 550,000 people turned out against rising fuel prices and the cost of living after weeks of student protests. More than 2,500 arrests followed that day. Over 2,000 shops and businesses were reported directly affected, with damage estimated by the Chambers of Commerce and Industry at hundreds of millions of euros. About 1,000 police officers were injured, and one demonstrator's hand was reportedly blown off by a crowd-control grenade.

The unrest has spread past France's borders. Riot police fired tear gas at thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Tirana, Albania, and clashes were reported in Brussels. In Milan, hundreds of soldiers and police stopped protesters from gathering after concerns about a repeat of the previous week's violence. Separately, some 13,000 people rallied peacefully in Orléans against the hard-right National Rally party.

Presidential elections are six months away, and leading contenders have blamed Macron and his ministers for the conditions driving the marches. A 26-year-old Paris protester who gave her name as Zelie said people were "suffering a lot" and that "it's been too much". Two masked teenagers said their generation felt abandoned by the government. One of them called looting "really not good" but blamed "poverty and the violence of the police", adding that the protests would end when demands were answered.