France Protests: Mass Arrests Follow Cost-of-Living Marches

More than 2,000 people were arrested and about 600 police officers, firefighters and paramedics were injured in France on Saturday, Oct. 17, during unrest following demonstrations over the cost of living and public services. In Saint-Étienne, a 17-year-old boy lost his right hand in a crowd-control grenade incident.

Channel 4 reported that more than 500,000 people were thought to have joined demonstrations. Tens of thousands attended peaceful marches, The Irish Times reported, while violence and looting took place separately in Paris, Bordeaux, Nice and Marseilles.

Peaceful marches and social demands

Students, workers, parents, teachers and grandparents marched for more teachers, repairs to deteriorating schools and increased public-service funding. They also protested the high cost of living. The marches came after four weeks of street demonstrations and school barricades. Some banners said the government wasn't listening.

Hundreds gathered again at Paris's Place de la République on Sunday, as a heavy police presence watched over the square. The government held crisis talks that day, according to The Irish Times. Channel 4 reported that officials expected to declare a state of emergency; its report also said President Emmanuel Macron was set to address the nation and asked whether he would declare one.

Separate groups moved between locations, starting fires and barricading streets. Masked looters smashed shopfronts and took goods. Some looters in Paris appeared to be children, while masked adult men were seen breaking shopfronts. Police said they had arrested 855 people in the capital, a record.

Damage and questions over policing

Burnt barricades made from bicycles, bins and other materials, smashed shop windows and the remains of torched cars still lined Paris streets on Sunday. Socialist deputy mayor Lamia El Aaraje said the city had seen “a level of violence that we have never seen before, I believe”.

In Limoges, the 19th-century town hall burned down, and part of its roof collapsed. Mayor Guillaume Guérin said those who stormed the building “were not demonstrators that defend causes” but “people organised for war”. Attackers threatened to kill a caretaker and told elected officials they would “burn”, he said. Guérin said municipal police, though present in number, could no longer fight the rioters at about 3.30pm because they had run out of ammunition. He called it “a colossal failure of the state”.

In Marseilles, masked groups stormed city hall and a police station. Socialist mayor Benoît Payan told BFMTV: “I have no words ... I never thought I'd ever live through something like this. Hordes of rioters and looters attacked our common [state] buildings ... with no real demands, but with the sole aim to wreck the demands of those who had demonstrated legitimately.” He said people should question policing tactics. Groups also targeted town hall buildings elsewhere, including in Lille.

Green mayor of Lyons Grégory Doucet told Le Monde he was “stunned by the violence against public and state property” and had seen and heard “fear and anger”. Shop owners felt abandoned, he said. He called for a “sense of nuance” and urged the government to examine the events while “avoiding stereotypes”. He also called for a political response to peaceful demonstrators' long-running social demands, and for an investigation into the roots of the violence.

Political response

Traders' unions said more than 1,500 shops and businesses had been ransacked, causing tens of millions of euros in damage. A Paris shoe-shop owner said the looting “had nothing to do with the peaceful protesters” and described the groups as organised.

Politicians on the left and right questioned policing tactics and said the state had lacked intelligence. They called on Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez to resign, saying the government appeared surprised by the scale of the violence and attacks on state buildings, bus stops, roads and shops.

Macron wrote on social media that there was “no place for violence”. In a separate statement reported by DW, he said nothing justified the “unbridled violence” and vowed to punish rioters and vandals, while urging people to distinguish between protesters and vandals. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government wouldn't be “intimidated” and blamed the unrest on the “ultra-left” and criminals. He called criticism of police leadership “a dangerous and cynical reversal of responsibilities”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who attended Saturday's peaceful demonstration in Paris, accused the government of organisational failings that had “opened the door to chaos”.