Hello and welcome to the details of France faces new wave of rallies over living costs, police powers and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - The European Union’s second largest economy has been gripped by high-school blockades and cost-of-living demonstrations for more than a month, ahead of presidential elections next year that the far right sees as its best chance of seizing power. — AFP pic
PARIS, Nov 14 — France faces more rallies today with demonstrators venting frustrations ranging from inflation to opposition to a new police bill at the latest protests.
The European Union’s second largest economy has been gripped by high-school blockades and cost-of-living demonstrations for more than a month, ahead of presidential elections next year that the far right sees as its best chance of seizing power.
Some of the largely peaceful rallies have seen fringe violence, as well as accusations of police brutality.
People were to take to the streets for the fifth Saturday in a row, with a main rally in Paris from 1pm (6pm Malaysian time) and dozens of other gatherings across the country.
In the capital, the Yellow Vest movement would join high-school students, unions and other activists fighting for children’s rights or opposed to a bill to give police more protection in their use of weapons.
“Society’s in bad shape,” said Claire Bourdille, from a collective battling violence against children and teenagers. “We can’t focus on one cause more than another.”
Activists have in recent months demanded better protection for children against sexual abuse.
Others will be protesting against a new bill in parliament to grant police who use their weapons a presumption of legitimate self-defence.
Backers, including the far-right National Rally party of presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen, say it is necessary to avoid police being automatically suspected of using disproportionate force.
‘Licence to kill’
Activists argue the bill, approved by the lower house and soon to go to the Senate, amounts to a “licence to kill”.
They say it would make holding security forces accountable even harder in a country where most cases of alleged police brutality rarely reach a criminal court.
Lawyers last week denounced alleged police violence at recent protests that led to “mutilations” including hand, foot and eye injuries.
Karl Ghazi, of the CGT union, said Saturday’s protest in Paris might be different with “real activist fatigue” after a month and a half of protests.
“It’ll essentially be child rights activists on one side and people against the ‘licence to kill’ on the other,” he said.
Around 146,000 people took part in demonstrations across France on Saturday last week, according to authorities, far lower numbers than on previous weekends.
The largest protests in recent weeks occurred during a union-led strike on Thursday last week, when more than half a million people took to the streets nationwide, according to official figures.
Unions have called for a new day of strikes on Tuesday, after rejecting a government promise to increase the minimum wage by 0.6 per cent as “crumbs”. — AFP
These were the details of the news France faces new wave of rallies over living costs, police powers for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
