A total of 457 people were arrested and 441 security forces were injured on Thursday during nationwide protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms, Interior Minister Gerald Darman said.
Speaking to JEE News on Friday morning, Daramian also said that 903 fires had been set on the streets of Paris during the most violent day of protests since January.
“There were a lot of demonstrations and some of them became violent, especially in Paris,” Durman added, praising the police for protecting the more than a million people who marched around France.
Police had warned that anarchist groups were expected to infiltrate the Paris march, and youths wearing hoods and face masks were seen smashing windows and setting fire to uncollected rubbish in the final stages of the demonstration.
Darman, a right-wing hardliner in Macron’s centrist government, rejected demands by protesters to roll back pension reforms that cleared parliament last week under controversial circumstances.
“I don’t think we should withdraw this law because of violence,” he said. “If so, that means there is no state. We must accept democratic, social debate, but not violent debate.
Elsewhere on Thursday, the entrance to Bordeaux City Hall was set on fire during clashes in the southwestern wine-exporting hub.
“I have difficulty understanding and accepting this kind of vandalism,” Bordeaux Mayor Pierre Hermack told JEE News on Friday.
“Why would you target our communal building, all the people of Bordeaux? I can only condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Britain’s King Charles III is scheduled to visit the southwestern city next Tuesday and was expected to visit City Hall and meet Hermack.
