Clashes erupt between protesters and officers at Paris police demo

Record ID: 103015

  • Title: Clashes erupt between protesters and officers at Paris police demo
  • Date: 18th May 2016
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (MAY 18, 2016) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF POLICE DEMONSTRATORS GATHERED
  • Embargoed: 2nd June 2016 14:28
  • Keywords: police protest violence labour law Paris
  • Location: PARIS, FRANCE
  • City: PARIS, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Lawmaking,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA0034IC4I13
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Banned from demonstrating, anti-police protesters clashed with riot police in Paris Wednesday (May 18) on the fringes of a police demonstration denouncing violence against law enforcement.
    An angry crowd set fire to a police car a few hundred metres from the rally as tensions ran high over accusations of police brutality against protesters, police officials and witnesses said.
    Local media reported there were police officers inside the car when it was torched. They were evacuated to safety when the car went up in flames.
    The public prosecutor's office said after the incident it was opening an inquiry into attempted homicide.
    Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the police and said 350 of them had been injured in stand-offs that had produced 1,300 arrests in just two months.
    "How can you let this be thought (that police aren't doing enough) when there have been 1,300 arrests, 800 in custody, 51 convictions in immediate trials, that there would be the slightest weakness in regards to troublemakers when I have given instructions to be totally firm," he said during a weekly assembly meeting.
    Tensions have been running high in France for weeks following deeply unpopular labour reforms proposed by President Francois Hollande's socialist government.
    Condemning what it described as mounting "anti-cop hatred", the Alliance police union called for Wednesday's rally in the Place de la Republique, a central Paris square that has seen regular skirmishes in past weeks between riot police and youths hurling petrol bombs and paving stones.
    Philippe Capon, head of one of the police unions leading the rally, denounced what he called the "small minority" of people who use violence against law enforcement.
    "It's unacceptable to have these minorities who are always looking to disrupt demonstrations, even a gathering of policemen that is taking place in good conditions. We haven't come to provoke anyone, we're here at Place de la Republique, which belongs to everyone and has been completely taken over these last few weeks. It was the gathering place after Charlie Hebdo, after the events of the Bataclan, people would come and gather at Place de la Republique but today people can't come together because we have this occupation of minorities, who are extremists and come to break things. Anarchists, small groups from the far-left wing who contest the state's authority, so for them the state is the security forces, the police, the gendarmes, that's why they come after us," Capon said.
    Further strikes and protests are planned for the rest of the week in what labour unions, along with a youth protest movement called "Nuit Debout" or "Up All Night", hope will prove a big enough show of force to make Hollande reconsider.
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