400,000 March in France With Almost 1,000 Arrested
The interior ministry counted 410,000 demonstrators across France, where unions claim about 800,000. Almost a thousand people were arrested nationally. The Paris march was moved at the last minute from Bastille to the city’s southern and eastern rim, and organisers complied rather than defy the ban.
That compliance is the correction to this morning’s framing: the route was relocated, not fought over. In Paris the official count was 110,000 against the unions’ 250,000, and the prosecutor reports 64 arrests including six minors, with more than 3,000 people stopped and searched. The interior minister said the marches themselves “passed off well” before police met “an extremely elevated level of violence” from several thousand radical activists at the rear, among them about 500 he identified as rioters; clashes ran roughly two hours. Looting happened but on a far smaller scale than last weekend. Two people were badly hurt, one in Clermont-Ferrand and a twenty-year-old in Toulouse who lost fingers. Something new was recorded too: in Cannes and Montpellier the authorities saw far-right activists claiming to protect businesses or seeking confrontation, which the minister said had not been witnessed before. The movement began with schoolchildren demanding teachers and repairs to leaking buildings, and has widened to the cost of living and the banning of protests.