(Updated with Castex)
by Richard Lough
PARIS, Feb 11 (Reuters) – The Paris police headquarters has deployed thousands of police officers who will be tasked with preventing the blockade of the French capital this weekend by “freedom convoys”, inspired by the protest movement truckers against health restrictions in Canada.
Prime Minister Jean Castex assured that the authorities would show the greatest “firmness” to prevent any paralysis of the country, like what has been happening for two weeks in Ottawa, the Canadian capital.
“The right to demonstrate and to have an opinion is a constitutional right. The right to block others (…) is not”, declared the head of government on France 2.
“I can in no way allow these virulent attacks against vaccination to be associated with the word freedom,” he added of the “antivax” activists who figure in the convoys.
Despite the ban on all gatherings in Paris and the risk of fines or even arrest for participants, several convoys of varying sizes and coming from all over France were heading for the capital on Friday.
These convoys, the size of which is difficult to estimate, are made up of an aggregate of people hostile to the policies of Emmanuel Macron’s government: opponents of vaccination against COVID-19 or health restriction measures in general, former ” yellow vests”, activists of political groups or simple citizens wanting to protest against the rise in the price of gasoline or to demand more purchasing power.
“We’ve been going around in circles for three years… We look at the Canadians, we say to ourselves ‘it’s wonderful what they’re doing’ and there, in eight days, something happened,” Jean told Reuters. -Marie Azais, a retiree claiming to be a former “red cap” and “yellow vest”, who is taking part in the convoy coming from the South-West.
While the convoys leaving from the south of France, in which the former “yellow vests” seem numerous, left for several days, others which were to set off Friday morning from the west or north of the country counted very few of attendees.
In the groups formed on social networks, some organizers called on the members of the convoys to be discreet in order to reach Paris by escaping police checks on the main axes leading to the capital.
Some participants say they want to demonstrate on foot in the center of the city on Saturday, while others, more virulent, brandish the threat of a road blockade.
“They won’t be able to refuse everyone, it’s impossible,” a woman in a yellow vest who came to cheer on motorists as they passed near Toulouse told Reuters. “I say that they must enter in force, for freedom!”
The stated objective of the convoys is then to reach Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission, where their assembly has also been banned by the Belgian authorities. (Report by Richard Lough in Paris and Alex Minguez in Toulouse, written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault)