The police estimated in the afternoon their number at some 3,300 vehicles, including a thousand on the RN20 from Orleans and 500 on the A10-A11 motorway from Le Mans. The ban on gathering convoys was upheld on Friday evening by the Paris administrative court.
Leaving in convoys from all over France, thousands of opponents of the vaccine pass or the government approached Paris on Friday, despite the ban decreed by the police headquarters, while Emmanuel Macron called for “the greatest calm “. “We are all collectively tired by what we have been going through for two years. This fatigue is expressed in several ways: by disarray in some, depression in others. We see a very strong mental suffering, in our young people and less young. And sometimes, this fatigue also translates into anger. I hear it and respect it”, underlines the head of state in an interview with Ouest-France. “But, he adds, I call for the greatest calm.”
From daybreak, processions of hundreds of private cars, motorhomes and vans left Lille, Strasbourg or Vimy (Pas-de-Calais) or Châteaubourg (Ille-et-Vilaine), heading for the capital. The police estimated in the afternoon their number at some 3,300 vehicles, including a thousand on the RN20 from Orleans and 500 on the A10-A11 motorway from Le Mans. It is an action “on a phenomenal scale”, told AFP a coordinator of the movement. The ban on the assembly of convoys was however upheld on Friday evening by the Paris administrative court, which rejected two appeals. “It’s a betrayal. The foundations of the decree are not respectful of the law, of the freedom to demonstrate,” anti-vaccine activist and “yellow vest” Sophie Tissier told AFP. origin of one of the appeals.
Prime Minister’s warning
A heterogeneous gathering of opponents of President Emmanuel Macron and “yellow vests” who protested against his government in 2018-2019, the movement was formed on social networks and encrypted messaging on the model of the mobilization which paralyzes the capital. Canadian Ottawa. Two months before the presidential election, the demonstrators first demand the withdrawal of the vaccination pass and also defend claims on purchasing power or the cost of energy. The government plans for the end of March or the beginning of April the lifting of the vaccination pass. Refuting any desire to block the capital, the participants hope to spend the night at its gates and then swell the ranks of the processions against the vaccine pass organized each week on Saturday.
“You have to be very firm” in the event of blocking attempts, warned Prime Minister Jean Castex on France 2. “Obviously, the convoys are slowing down hard so as not to arrive before evening-night, with target shopping centers all around Paris”, analyzes a police source. “It’s important not to disturb other users, to keep the population on our side, like in Canada”, launched Robin, from a parking lot in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, in the suburbs of Strasbourg. “Vaccination is a form of respect for others”. “Are we doing a service to the government by being seen as painstaking? Are we serving as leverage but not being enough to really turn things around,” asks David, a 51-year-old craftsman who joined the Breton convoy. Like most of the journalists’ interlocutors, he prefers not to give his name.
Some demonstrators then intend to reach Brussels for a “European convergence” scheduled for February 14. The Belgian authorities have banned access to the capital. On Friday, others also spread calls to occupy roundabouts in the regions on Saturday. “I appeal to join all the big cities to occupy them, multiply the gathering points”, launched in a video posted on social networks one of the initiators of the movement, under the pseudonym of Rémi Monde. If participants appear as “apolitical” and “partisan” citizens, government spokesman Gabriel Attal warned on Friday against the “attempt to instrumentalize” political “French fatigue” vis-à-vis face of the Covid-19 pandemic, two months before the presidential election.
Philippot planned to welcome the demonstrators
The leader of the Patriots Florian Philippot, whose troops march every Saturday in Paris against health restrictions, has planned to welcome the demonstrators on Friday evening at Place Denfert-Rochereau, in the south of the capital. “We are demonstrating in support of the conveyors (…) They are not thugs, they are not sores either, they are working and middle classes,” Georges, 35, told AFP. consultant present at the gathering of Patriots, wishing to remain anonymous. Due to “risks of public order disturbances”, the prefecture has planned a “specific device” to “prevent the blocking of roads, verbalize and arrest offenders”, who incur six months in prison and 7,500 euros in fines. fine, said the prefecture.
In Essonne, south of Paris, the prefect Eric Jalon has set up a dozen points of “reinforced checks” to remind motorists going up to Paris “the sanctions to which they are exposed in the event of blockage or obstruction to traffic”. In Paris, the prefect of police Didier Lallement has “created a certain number of temporary pounds which will allow us with several dozen towing vehicles to put an end to any blockage (…) the device is ready, it will be firm and we will do so that freedom of movement can be exercised,” he told reporters. Armored gendarmerie vehicles were deployed in the capital on Friday afternoon, for the first time since the end of 2018 at the height of the mobilization of “yellow vests”.
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