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YELLOW VESTS

French police dislodge fuel protesters as movement wanes (for now)

Protesters angry over high fuel taxes were back out on the roads across France on Tuesday for a fourth day however numbers had dropped to around 10,000. The French government has asked police to clear the road blocks while the interior minister blasted a radicalisation of the movement.

Published: 20 November 2018 14:09 CET
French police dislodge fuel protesters as movement wanes (for now)
Photo: AFP
LATEST on Tuesday:
  • Road blocks are back in place in many French regions
  • However numbers protesting drop to around 10,000
  • Interior Minister blasts the radicalisation of the movement
  • Police ordered to clear the blockades
  • Images show protesters burning motorway toll near Bordeaux
  • Some 528 people have been injured since Saturday
  • 92 police and gendarmes have been injured including 17 seriously

France's 'yellow vest' protests entered the fourth day on Tuesday but the movement appeared to be losing steam with only around 10,000 people still manning the barricades nationwide, down from nearly 300,000 on Saturday. 

But the movement could easily gain strength at the weekend when further protests are planned with some calling for a mass blockade of Paris.

Protesters are determined to keep up the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron who they blame for a rise in the price of petrol and a loss of their spending power.

The French government has become increasingly concerned and frustrated that the movement has become radicalised.

After images were published online showing yellow vest wearing protesters burning a motorway toll at Virsac, the Interior Minister Christophe Castaner denounced a “total drift” of the movement suggesting that while it was mainly good natured on Saturday it has now become radicalised. 

“We can see today that there has been a “total drift” (dérive totale”) of a movement that was mainly held in good spirits on Saturday,” he told France 2 radio.

“We can see there is a radicalisaton with incoherent demands that are all over the place,” Castaner said.

The interior minister announced that 92 police and gendarmes had been injured. 

Speaking on Monday evening Castaner appealed to protesters to end the road blocks.

“I make a solemn but firm appeal to protesters to carry on demonstrating if they wish but not to block or attack the people's freedom. The operations to clear the blockades will continue,” he said.

Some 28,000 protesters took part in go-slow and road blocks on Monday. One person was accidentally killed and 528 people have been injured, 17 seriously, during the “Yellow Vest” protests.
 
 
(Protesters against police at Virsac on the A10 near Bordeaux. AFP)
 
 
Protesters against police at Virsac on the A10 near Bordeaux. AFP)
 
   
As the protests rumbled on, it emerged four men were taken into custody and charged as part of an anti-terrorist investigation in the southeastern city of Saint-Etienne on Saturday — the first day of the blockades — accused of planning to take advantage of the police mobilisation for the demonstrations to mount a terror attack, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
 
One of the suspects texted his fiancee saying, “It's going to bleed on November 17”, the newspaper said. Officials were not immediately available to 
comment on the report.
 
 
Blockades around France
 
On Tuesday, in the town of Cournon-d'Auvergne, located in the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand in central France in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region a fuel depot has been blocked since Monday evening by protesters, according to local reports. 
 
Meanwhile in the Yonne department in the northeastern Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, the demonstrators set up on Tuesday morning on the roundabout of Rosa Park, south of the town of Sens after riot police were forced to unblock a site in the same area where 200 trucks were immobilized.
 
 
In the Côtes-d'Armor, “yellow vests” are reportedly still present in the towns of Plaintel, Langueux, Loudéac, Dinan and Guingamp.
 
However, dozens of “yellow vests” that were blocking the oil depot of Vern-sur-Seiche, south of Rennes, were removed by the riot police at around 6:45 am on Tuesday. 
 
In the Indre department, a filtered blockade is affecting traffic in the centre of the town of Saint-Maur, with traffic also being filtered in Argenton-sur-Creuse. 
 
In the town of Montierchaume, the roads are totally blocked between Châteauroux and Issoudun. 
 
And in Corsica, the “yellow vests” have lifted the blockade of the Marana oil depot, south of Bastia however they have warned that there may be further action. 

 
On Monday, security forces cleared protesters from several sites, including a suspension bridge leading to the southwestern city of Bordeaux that had been 
blocked for three days.

Member comments

  1. We had a cardiologist specialist rdv on Monday we found the roads blocked on our normal route We were forced to take a detour through the clay roads of the vineyards. Single track with cars/vans in both directions! It was frightening as there were deep culverts either side of the track. It took us miles our of our way, added 30 mins to our journey and we arrived exhausted and frayed. Such indiscri-minate blocking of roads where there is no prior notice is untennable. We took a different route home to avoid the jams, but again, this was a major detour, and took 45mins more than usual. If we did not have a full tank of fuel, what might have happened if we had run out ? If road blockages are to be put in place, then there needs to be proper organisation by the police and advance warning of where the blockages are to be found. To do these pop-up blockages just after the devastating flooding in the area, is unconscionable. People are traumatised enough, without having extra pressures put on their activities in this way.

  2. Let’s be thankful that at last the police have been ordered to break up the blockades.
    Normally they just sit there enjoying the spectacle. This tougher stance is essential to counteract the takeover of a peaceful protest by the ever present radical element who are hell bent to destroy any democracy.
    Freddy

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Is France’s ‘yellow vest’ movement really on its way back?

Nearly two years since 'yellow-vest' protesters flooded the streets, the signature gilets jaunes have become a rare sight in France. With a comeback announced on September 12th, what is left of the movement that shook France?

Published: 3 September 2020 11:53 CEST
Updated: 12 September 2020 08:58 CEST
Is France's 'yellow vest' movement really on its way back?
Yellow vest protests in Paris in 2019. Photo: AFP

When Priscillia Ludosky put on a yellow vest for the first time and headed out to the Champs Elysées to protest, she had no idea that nearly 300,000 people would do the same.

It was November 17th, 2018, the first 'yellow vest' protest in the capital and the birth of a mass-movement so large that its vows to overthrow French President Emmanuel Macron’s government seemed, for a moment, credible. 

Nearly two years later, Macron is still president – and aiming for reelection – while the ‘yellow vest’ movement has all but disappeared from the public eye.

“It’s been a long time since I wore the yellow vest,” Priscillia Ludosky, founder and leading figure of the movement, told The Local.

She had not left the movement, but said she was less active than she had been.

“I'm less on-the-ground than I used to. The pandemic put the brakes on most things,” she said.

Despite France's rising coronavirus rates, the 'yellow vests' have declared a comeback protest on September 12th, promising to “never give up”.

 

But with the protests before lockdown gathering only a fraction of the numbers they once rallied, how much is there really left of the 'yellow vests'?

“The movement is much smaller, much less active, and much more divided than it was at the outset,” historian Sylvain Boulouque told The Local.

Boulouque has followed the movement from the beginning and has written the book Mensonges en gilet jaune (Lies in yellow vests), about the role social media and fake news played in fuelling the 'yellow vests' anger.

When the ‘yellow vests’ first spiralled into a national mass-movement, their rallying cry “Macron demission !” (Macron resign) was the one ringing the loudest, and it was also one of the few demands that all of the ‘yellow vests’ could unite behind.

“The movement spans all the way from the extreme-left to the extreme-right. There is no unity on the fundamental political questions,” Boulouque said.

The more time passed, the more the movement's internal divisions became clear. Today, Boulouque said, there was “a little bit of everything” left, and just keeping track of the movement had become a challenge.

“It’s so local that the demographic changes from town to town and week to week,” he said.

Among the extreme right-wing were a number of conspiracy theory believers, he said, including anti-mask activists who opposed the French government's new rules on masks.

Pro- and anti-masks was just the newest fault line dividing the 'yellow vests', Boulouque said.

“The pandemic will split them rather than reunite them,” he said.

‘Covid proved our points’

Seizing on the pandemic to re-mobilise the masses is what the still-active 'yellow vests' hope to do on September 12th.

Leading 'yellow vest' figure Jérôme Rodrigues. Photo: AFP

Jérôme Rodrigues, another ‘yellow vest’ leading figure, told Slate that the pandemic was their “best ally”.

“Covid proved our points about the degrading of the health system and the limits of the capitalist system,” Rodrigues said.

When the French government imposed a nationwide, strict lockdown in March, it was to save the hospitals in hard-hit areas such as Paris from the mounting pressure of a rapidly increasing patient flow. 

The lockdown, which lasted over two months, had a crippling impact on the economy and saw the government spend billions on emergency help schemes to prevent chain bankruptcies and mass layoffs. 

Despite the government's efforts to kickstart the economy, France’s unemployment rate is set to increase by 10 percent by the end of the year. Young people will be the worst affected, according to France’s national institute for statistics, Insee. Rodrigues predicted that the looming downturn would reaffirm people's faith in the 'yellow vest' movement.

“With the coming crisis, people who were doing well financially and who have never had a hard time are going to fall flat on their faces,” Rodrigues said.

'Yellow vest' leading figure Priscillia Ludosky has been participating in protests against police violence and in support of France's hospital sector the past months. Photo: AFP

'Sensationalist media'

Rodrigues became a symbol of the ‘yellow vests’ after he was hit in the eye by what he claimed to be an LBD rubber bullet fired by police (the police refute his accusation, but the authority overseeing the police has launched an investigation into the matter). 

Blinded in one eye, Rodrigues incorporated one of the most jarring features of the protests: their increasingly violent character. The recurring scenes of violence that dominated the protests contributed to the ‘yellow vests’ hogging headlines for months – not just in France, but across the world. 

Images of burning cars, police armed with rubber-bullet guns, violent fist-fights and black-clad protesters smashing ATMs with baseball bats shocked the world. 

But the violence also dominated the media coverage of the protests, which meant what the protesters were saying got less attention.

READ ALSO How the 'yellow vests' made France have a national conversation about police violence

To Ludosky, this was a big problem.

“The media won’t cover anything unless it’s sensationalist,” she said. 

Ludosky authored the online petition that became the catalyst for the ‘yellow vest’ protests. In it, she wrote that the government’s proposed carbon tax was both falsely branded a green policy and was harmful to the many people who depended on their cars to get around every day.

The document went viral and gathered more than one million signatures, and the fluorescent yellow vest that all vehicles in France must be equipped with became the symbol of the masses revolting against the elites.

Ludosky said her main point was lost in the coverage. She was not an angry car-enthusiast defending her right to drive, she was saying that the tax was unfair and would impact the most on the poorest.

“The longer we protested, the more they tried to tell everyone that we don't know what we want. That we were only out there to break things,” she said.

The early days of the movement saw hundreds of 'roundabout protests' in the French provinces. Photo: AFP

'They are there'

The violence also discouraged many of the 'yellow vests' who had little experience with protesting and were shocked by the use of force on both sides.

Danielle Tartakowsky, a professor at the Paris 8 University who specialises in social movements in contemporary France, said it was important to distinguish between the ‘yellow vest’ who still turned up to protests in Paris – often young, keen and ready to go head to head with police – and the ‘yellow vests’ mobilising in less urban areas.

“In the countryside the ‘yellow vest’ movement is the same as it was at the outset,” she said.

In her new book, On est là ! (We’re here), a main ‘yellow vest’ rallying cry, she concludes just that; the movement had changed, but the ‘yellow vests’ were still present.

“That does not mean that they are ready to rally in the same ways, but it would be dangerous and delusional to say that they have disappeared,” she said.

Tartakowsky said that, while the 'yellow vests' successes could seem limited from the outside, they had pushed through important change indirectly by showing that it was possible to force through change.

“Even if they did not win on all points they showed that it was possible to win something, to make the government backpedal,” she said, referring to the carbon tax.

The camp

When the protests started, the roundabout became the main stage for the protesters who did not travel to Paris to make their discontent heard and seen in the capital. 

From June 2019 until March 2020, just before the pandemic hit with full force, Séverine spent most of her free time on a local roundabout where she and some 30 other ‘yellow vests’ had set up a camp.

A teacher in Amiens, a city a couple of hours north of Paris, Séverine was an early believer that the ‘yellow vests’ would be the movement that finally could radically change a system she saw as unjust, undemocratic and unsustainable.

“I passed all my evenings, all my weekends at the camp,” she said.

The camp was a microcosm of the world they hoped to create.

“We cooked together, discussed, we really had some great moments there together,” she said.

They were all kinds of people at the camp; a waiter, a metro driver, a nursery teacher, a few retirees. An Indian student who just needed somewhere to crash for free. 

“It was a very open environment,” Séverine said.

But the problems soon surfaced. The camp, like the movement, swore to a leaderless management style where no one had a final say.

“It was a mess. Obviously, we didn’t manage to make any decisions,” Séverine said.

Violence at protests became a major problem. Photo: AFP

'People are exhausted'

They split themselves into two groups. Oddly enough, the division had little to do with politics.

“It was not about left or right. We actually agreed on the fundamental issues. It was more about strong personalities and people simply not getting along,” she said.

The atmosphere soured. They argued more, discussed less. They went from 30, to 20, to about 10. Then, after the local election in March, just before the pandemic made social distancing the norm, the mayor told them to clear the camp. 

Critics have long said the ‘yellow vests’ lack of leadership was their major, perhaps the decisive, default. How could they push for change when they had no idea what they wanted?

Despite having become so disillusioned with the movement that she no longer knew if she wanted to call herself a ‘yellow vest’ at all, Séverine was not sure this was their main problem. 

“Demonstrating every weekend is tiring. It requires a significant commitment. I think people are exhausted,” she said.

'I was fed up'

In the months that followed the movement’s heyday in early 2019, the protests followed the same pattern as Séverine's camp.

They were increasingly sparse in numbers and the atmosphere increasingly tense and bitter.

“You're walking in a state of complete stress, afraid that someone is aiming at you. You don't hear the messages anymore,” Séverine said.

Five people have lost a hand in the protests. Twenty-five were blinded in an eye. According to government numbers, 2,500 protesters were hurt in the protests by the end of 2019, along with 1,800 police officers.

“No one could imagine that a movement could last this long without losing momentum,” Ludosky said.

“Keeping on going cost a lot to the people who got involved. It's money, time, people lost limbs, couples separated.”

READ ALSO ANALYSIS: French police are not all thugs – they are being placed in an impossible situation

Like many others, she was put off by the violence. In the end, she left her yellow vest in her car.

“I was fed up,” she said. “Every time I wore it I worried about the police controlling me.”

She was not sure if she still believed in the movement.

“It’s complicated. The presidential elections are coming up soon, crying out for Macron’s resignation doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“But the 12th will be the moment to go out on the streets. Not necessarily in Paris, but we need to show something.”

 

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