The party of May 1 in France yesterday left half a thousand detainees and hundreds more injured, furniture destroyed, fires and numerous violent incidents. Specifically, 540 people were arrested across the country, 305 of them in Paris, according to data updated Tuesday by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
There are 406 police officers and gendarmes who were injured in the different marches that were held in the national territory. In the capital alone, 259 officers were injured, said the minister, interviewed on BFMTV.
Specifically, there was a policeman who was injured by a Molotov cocktail thrown by radicals and who had significant burns. He is hospitalized and, although his life is not in danger, he “could have died”, the minister said.
As Darmanin pointed out yesterday, there were a thousand radicals in the Paris demonstration, where, shortly after it began, there were 30 detainees and tensions began between some groups and the forces of order. The demonstration, which began in the Plaza de la República, ended in the Plaza de la Nación, where urban furniture and a bicycle parking lot were set on fire, creating a fire and forcing the firefighters to intervene.
The use of drones to control flows did not prevent all of these incidents. Yesterday Monday was one of the most massive and also tense protests since the movement against the controversial pension reform of the president, Emmanuel Macron, began. The law was promulgated two weeks ago, after three months of protests and strikes, but the clamor in the streets continues and the traditional march on May 1 became a new act of protest against this reform.
“We must have the strongest criminal sanctions against those who attack the police,” Darmanin added on Tuesday, calling for an “anti-thug law.”
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