According to a police source, some 850 vehicles in total had left the outskirts of Paris at the start of the afternoon for this stopover. Others came directly from elsewhere in France, according to another police source, specifying that there was no “strategy of arrest”.
” We loose nothing “
Arrived in a concert of horns, on a parking lot of shopping center in Fâches-Thumesnil, 10 km from the center of Lille, the participants, for some dressed in yellow vests, demonstrated there in the evening to cries of “We let go of nothing”, “Liberté Liberté”, brandishing numerous French flags, some stamped with the Cross of Lorraine. “We will go to Brussels to try to block, to fight against this policy of permanent control”, affirms Jean-Pierre Schmit, a 58-year-old unemployed man from Toulouse, who demonstrated on Saturday in Paris.
If some organized to spend the night there, the instruction to resume the road without delay for Brussels, in small groups, was given at the beginning of the evening by megaphone and on the loops of the Telegram messaging system used by the participants. The Belgian authorities have banned all demonstrations in the capital “with motorized vehicles” and announced that they have taken measures “to prevent the blocking of the Brussels-Capital region”.
“We are gradually losing our freedoms”
Those who call themselves “freedom convoys”, on the model of the mobilization which is currently paralyzing the Canadian capital Ottawa, bring together opponents of the vaccine pass but also of President Emmanuel Macron and also take up the claims of yellow vests on the cost of the life. Brandishing a poster “I love freedom”, Sandrine, a 45-year-old production manager, came to Lille from Lyon because, she says, “we are losing our freedoms little by little, in a very insidious way”.
A few police officers were visible around the parking lot, but “nothing prevents” the demonstrators from continuing to the border with Belgium, noted a police source. Coming from all over France, convoys had converged at the end of the week towards Paris. But, if the police had counted 3,000 vehicles for 5,000 demonstrators around Paris on Friday evening, all the convoys did not ultimately reach the capital and not all intended to reach Brussels.
Internal investigation
In a tweet, the Paris police headquarters said on Sunday to maintain “its vigilance to prevent blockages at the gates of Paris with reinforced checks throughout the day”. Some 7,500 members of the police have been mobilized in the capital since Friday and until Monday.
Early Saturday afternoon, more than a hundred vehicles had managed to reach the Champs-Élysées which were gradually evacuated by the police with tear gas.
A handful of diehards, however, remained until late at night in the Champs-Élysées district and in the Bois de Boulogne, forcing, according to the Prefecture of Police, the police to intervene to “verbalize and disperse” the last participants. to this prohibited event.
The police carried out 97 arrests and 513 verbalizations of participants in the convoys in Paris on Saturday, according to an overall report communicated on Sunday by the prefecture. And according to the prosecution, at 6 a.m., 81 people were in police custody, including Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the figures of the “yellow vests” and active support of the anti-pass convoys.
Arrested near the Elysée, he was placed in police custody for “organizing a prohibited demonstration and participating in a group formed to commit violence”, according to this source. Jérôme Rodrigues “wishes to indicate that he is in no way the organizer of this demonstration” and considers that he is a “political prisoner”, his lawyer David Libeskind said in a press release on Sunday.