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Minister calls on local authorities to ban extreme-right marches in France

The Local France
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Minister calls on local authorities to ban extreme-right marches in France
The extreme-right march in Paris. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)

France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has called on préfets the length and breadth of the country to systematically ban extreme-right organisations from staging marches, after around 600 neo-nazis took to the streets in Paris on Monday.

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Darminin made his comments in the National Assembly after Paris police said they were unable to ban a demonstration by nearly 600 people who took to the streets of the capital to mark the 29th anniversary of the death of far-right activist Sébastien Deyzieu, who died in 1994.

READ ALSO Paris police under fire over neo-Nazi rally

The demonstration ended with black-clad and masked participants chanting “Europe, youth, revolution”, a slogan of the violent Groupe union défense (GUD) far-right student group that was influential in the 1990s, according to reports.

The protest had been allowed to go ahead by city authorities, and police could be seen patrolling nearby.

Demonstrations were banned on Monday around the Champs-Élysées in Paris where Macron attended a May 8th ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. Police in eastern Lyon also outlawed demonstrations near a war memorial where Macron paid tribute to French Resistance hero Jean Moulin on the same day.

And police have also moved on protesters banging pots and pans in towns the President has visited since the controversial pension reform law was passed.

Damning the marches as “unacceptable”, Darminin said: “In view of what we have seen in the streets of the capital (...) I have instructed the police chiefs and local authorities that any ultra-right or extreme right activist, or any association or collective which will file demonstrations, will be met with prohibition orders. 

“We will let the courts judge whether … these demonstrations [can] be held.”

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