France was erecting a ring of steel in major cities ahead of new protests Saturday, with police, helicopters and armoured vehicles seeking to prevent a repeat of the violence and looting which erupted during nationwide demonstrations last weekend.
Shops and restaurants in central Paris were boarded up, the world-famous Louvre and Musee d’Orsay were closed and a curfew was in place for parts of the French capital ahead of hundreds of demonstrations planned across the country.
Weeks of protests by high school students over learning conditions sparked a movement that has since spread nationwide, fuelled by broader anger over the rising cost of living.
But some of the worst urban violence in years exploded on the sidelines of the demonstrations a week ago, which saw more than half a million people turn out.
About 70,000 security personnel will be deployed on Saturday, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, while Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu warned late on Friday that “the threat” of violence “remains high”.
The protests have come at a critical moment for France six months ahead of elections to replace President Emmanuel Macron, with a new poll underlining far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as the frontrunner and suggesting her position has been strengthened by the latest events.
Adding to tensions, Le Pen is due at the weekend to host her National Rally (RN) party congress in Orleans, with thousands of supporters expected and local authorities fearing clashes as counter-protesters also head to the city south of Paris.
There, shops were also boarded up and residents wary.
“The atmosphere is truly strange for a Saturday morning; everything is closed, and some businesses are barricaded. We really hope the security measures will prevent the kind of violence we saw last week,” Stephane Gentil, a local resident out for a bike ride, told AFP.
Macron met representatives of secondary school pupils on Friday, but they emerged from the talks urging students to keep protesting until the government put forward concrete proposals to address their demands.
– Offenders jailed –
Macron’s government has sought to draw a line between the legitimate demands of protesters and the looting, burning and ransacking that erupted on the sidelines of demonstrations last Saturday, which it has blamed on “ultra-left” groups.
Courts have already sent 217 people, half of them first-time offenders, to prison over the events on Saturday, officials said.
An extreme-left group in western France posted on its website a call for its supporters to be “uncatchable, unpredictable, to evade the deployment” of police.
Authorities have stepped up security measures and imposed restrictions on protests.
In Orleans, between 20,000 and 30,000 people are expected to come out against Le Pen’s National Rally party, but the gathering will be barred from the city centre, the prefecture said.
In the southeastern city of Lyon, central areas will also be off-limits to demonstrators this weekend.
In Paris, police overturned a previous permit for union-led protesters to march between Bastille and Nation squares in the east and giving permission for an alternative route.
Unions vowed to push ahead on the banned route, citing safety concerns over the alternative.
Authorities in Marseille had also banned protests but announced Friday that a union-organised demonstration would be allowed on an “exceptional basis”.
– Police ‘responsibility’ –
The restrictions, including outright bans on protests in some cities, have drawn criticism.
Amnesty International denounced what it called “a slide toward authoritarian practice”, saying the measures were “jeopardising the right to demonstrate peacefully”.
About 20 percent more members of the security forces will be deployed this weekend following questions over police preparedness and intelligence gathering ahead of last week’s violence.
“Police have a responsibility both to ensure that protests can take place peacefully and safely and to protect the public from violent disorder,” said Eva Cosse, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch.
She voiced alarm over reports of children being severely injured by crowd-control weapons during recent gatherings.
The violence has tarnished the image of France ahead of elections that could be a turning point in its modern history, with the government’s debt pile also troubling investors.
Polls show Le Pen on track to win both the first and second rounds of presidential voting.
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