TENS of thousands of people marched in France Saturday to protest police violence in demonstrations organised by the left, with clashes breaking out on the margins of the Paris rally.
The nationwide protest came just under three months after the point-blank killing by a policeman of a youth outside Paris at a traffic check sparked over a week of rioting in Paris and elsewhere.
In Paris, demonstrators of all ages held up placards proclaiming “Stop state violence”, “Don’t forgive or forget” or “The law kills”, with a statue of justice with its eyes crossed out in red.
The demonstrators took particular aim at Article 435-1 of the internal security code, introduced in 2017, which extends the possibility for the forces of law and order to shoot in the event of a suspect’s refusal to comply.
The demonstrators were responding to a call by the radical left including the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).
Unions said some 80,000 people joined the protests across France, including 15,000 in Paris, but the interior ministry put the number at 31,300 nationwide, with 9,000 in Paris.
The government denounced “unacceptable violence” on the margins of the march in Paris, after were officers trapped in their police vehicle when it was attacked, an AFP correspondent said.
Hundreds of people wearing black and in hoods broke away from the main march of several thousand people in Paris
They smashed the windows of a bank branch and threw objects at a police car stuck in traffic, an AFP reporter said.
Paris police said that the police car was attacked with a crowbar and only the intervention of an anti-riot police unit allowed the release of the vehicle.
