Demonstrators and onlookers amid a cloud of tear gas on the Champs Elysees in Paris, February 12, 2022 (AFP / Sameer Al-DOUMY)
Some of the thousands of opponents of the vaccine pass, whose convoys were heading for Paris, managed to reach the Champs-Élysées on Saturday, quickly triggering the intervention of the police to disperse them, while one of the figures “yellow vests”, Jérôme Rodrigues, was arrested near the Elysée.
A heterogeneous gathering of opponents of President Emmanuel Macron, the vaccine pass and “yellow vests”, those who call themselves “freedom convoys” have been formed on the model of the mobilization which is currently paralyzing the Canadian capital Ottawa.
Cars, motorhomes and vans left Nice, Lille, Strasbourg, Vimy (Pas-de-Calais) or Châteaubourg (Ille-et-Vilaine), traveling for two or three days at reduced speed on secondary roads to reach the capital.
Among the disparate instructions circulating in the movement: a call to rally on the Champs-Elysées.
Around 2:00 p.m., more than a hundred vehicles had joined the avenue, motorists, some now on foot, waving flags or chanting “freedom”.
The situation then became tense: the Place de l’Arc-de-Triomphe then the Avenue de Champs-Élysées were gradually evacuated by the police with tear gas.
Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the figures of the “yellow vests” movement, films the demonstration which takes place in Place d’Italie in Paris, on February 12, 2022 (AFP / Sameer Al-DOUMY)
A figure of “yellow vests”, Jérôme Rodrigues was arrested near the Elysée as the organizer of a demonstration banned by the Paris police chief, according to a police source.
Traffic was gradually restored at the end of the day on this avenue.
“We had been in Paris since 5:00 p.m. yesterday, like a Trojan horse. We were invisible, we wanted to blend in with the crowd. I am + yellow vest + but there are a lot of first-time demonstrators,” Laure told AFP. , 57, driving school instructor in Seine-et-Marne “against the vaccination pass”, fleeing tear gas. Like many protesters, she declined to give her name.
– Purchasing power –
Other people who came with the anti-pass convoys and claiming to defend “freedom” but also purchasing power, also joined the traditional demonstrations to protest against the vaccine pass authorized on Saturday in Paris.
A vehicle from the convoy of opponents of the vaccine pass on the Champs Elysees in Paris, February 12, 2022 (AFP / Sameer Al-DOUMY)
At midday, a few hundred people gathered at Place d’Italie for a demonstration of “yellow vests” towards Place de la Nation. In the procession, in the middle of a few French flags, Jean-Paul Lavigne, 65, including 40 years in the factory, came from Albi in one of the “freedom convoys” on Thursday.
Holding an Occitan flag, he explained that he wanted to demonstrate against the rise in fuel, electricity, food, but also against vaccines, “a lie from our government”.
“All with the convoys”, we heard over a megaphone in another rally, that organized by the movement Les Patriotes de Florian Philippot, place du Palais Royal.
Aurélie M., 42, executive assistant in the Paris region, unvaccinated, is sorry to “no longer be able to take the TGV (…) but to be able to take line 13 of the metro, crowded”. “There are a lot of unfair inconsistencies,” she denounces.
– “Collectively tired” –
A convoy of 300 vehicles was stopped on the A4 motorway, coming from the east of Paris, and the police were fining vehicles according to the police headquarters, as they had done earlier in the day at Porte de Saint Cloud.
Police deployment on the Champs Elysées to prevent blockages of the anti-pass convoy in Paris, February 12, 2022 (AFP / Sameer Al-DOUMY)
At a gathering point in the forest of Fontainebleau, around 400 vehicles were parked at midday, according to a police source.
In the capital, nearly 7,200 police and gendarmes were deployed, according to the prefecture, which indicated that it had arrested 44 people at 5:30 p.m.
A gathering of opponents of the vaccine pass in Le Mans, in Sarthe, on February 12, 2022 (AFP / JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER)
Prime Minister Jean Castex promised firmness Friday on France 2 “if they block traffic or if they try to block the capital”.
“We are all collectively tired of what we have been going through for two years,” President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on Friday with Ouest-France.
“This fatigue is expressed in several ways: by disarray in some, depression in others. We see a very strong mental suffering, in our young and old. And sometimes, this fatigue also results in anger. I hear it and respect it”. “But”, he added, “I call for the utmost calm”.
The ban on gathering convoys was upheld on Friday evening by the Paris administrative court, which rejected two appeals.
Opponents of the vaccine pass greet a convoy of vehicles in Chartres, in Eure-et-Loire, on February 12, 2022 (AFP / JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER)
“The right to demonstrate and to have an opinion are a constitutionally guaranteed right in our Republic and in our democracy. The right to block others or to prevent coming and going is not,” said Jean Castex. .
Two months before the presidential election, the government says it plans to lift the vaccination pass by the end of March or the beginning of April and intends to abolish the obligation to wear a mask as of February 28 in places where the pass is required.
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© 2022 AFP
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