While hundreds of convoys from all over Europe met in Brussels on Monday, we saw that the weekend had been marked by fierce clashes in Paris. Inspired by the movement of Canadian truckers, on Sunday there were several hundred motorhomes, vans and simple cars in Val-d’Oise, the Bois de Boulogne and Seine-et-Marne to hit the road again towards Brussels, where similar convoys from several countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Austria and the Netherlands, should gather.
As in Paris this weekend, the Belgian federal and municipal police recalled the ban on demonstrating in the capital on Monday with motorized vehicles. Controls have been reinforced at the borders and around the city. The police are particularly concerned that the demonstrators will block access to the airport. Residents were advised not to drive downtown. The city of Ghent, located 55 kilometers from Brussels, has also banned convoys.
Unlike in Canada and like in Paris, the heavyweights should be few in number. In Europe, truckers are generally not the owners of their truck and they are not subject to any vaccination obligation. If the Belgian police take the example of their French colleagues, Brussels should not be blocked, but the clashes could be muscular.
Champs-Élysées under tear gas
On Saturday, the 7,200 police officers deployed in Paris made around a hundred arrests and distributed around 500 tickets of 135 euros each. Opponents of health measures, which involved a strong contingent of yellow vests, faced an exceptional police force. We had even taken out the tanks, something rarely seen in the French capital.
If the Champs-Élysées were blocked all day, the demonstrators who came in motorhomes, vans and cars only managed to paralyze the Étoile roundabout for a few hours. In the middle of the afternoon, the hundred vehicles that had escaped checks at the gates of Paris were quickly dispersed.
A motley crowd of a few thousand peaceful demonstrators, however, played cat and mouse all day with riot squads determined not to let the slightest passer-by roam the Champs-Élysées. Many tourists and curious people terrified by the tear gas launched without warning learned it at their expense. An investigation was opened following the broadcast of a video showing a policeman hitting a man on the head with a truncheon.
“We were gassed on the way home. Thank you, Mr Macron! said an angry man in his 60s, whose two nephews, Victor (13) and Lucien (10) were lamenting while rubbing their eyes. The family found themselves in the midst of tear gas as they left the bowling alley on Avenue Foch to return home.
Further down the Champs-Élysées, tourists at the Le Deauville cafe found themselves in the middle of the gas as they quietly had a drink on the terrace. A tear gas canister was even launched inside the cafe.
“We just want to demonstrate peacefully,” said Emma, a 25-year-old lab technician from Le Havre the day before. “We spent the night in the car to be here today. Me, I am vaccinated, but I do not accept the [passeport] vaccine. It’s not a way to do it. We want our freedom back. Unlike many protesters, Emma had never participated in the Yellow Vests movement and this was her first demonstration in Paris.
This was not the case for Mathilde, draped in a large Canadian maple leaf and accustomed to yellow vests. A French and Canadian citizen, she worked for five years in Montreal in video editing. “We thank the Canadians for giving us the impetus to go back to Paris,” she said. Mathilde has taken part in all the major demonstrations of the Yellow Vests for three years. “What revolts me the most are these masks that are imposed on children. In a free society, we get vaccinated by choice, not to be able to go to restaurants and movies. »
Electoral firmness?
Shortly before the demonstration, President Emmanuel Macron had called for “the greatest calm”. For most political observers, this show of force is not unrelated to the presidential election, the first round of which will be held in less than two months.
“It’s still the candidate who starts the campaign with armored vehicles,” quipped the president of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen. His far-right nationalist rival, Éric Zemmour, has reaffirmed his intention to abolish the vaccine passport which, he says, “came out of time […] while the authorities knew very well that the epidemic was on its descent”. On Sunday, the candidate of the Republicans (LR), Valérie Pécresse, promised to introduce the citizens’ initiative referendum, an old demand of the Yellow Vests.
Evoking the demonstrators mounted in Paris on Saturday, the essayist Mathieu Slama (Farewell freedom, La Cité) estimated on France Info that they were “very diverse. There are conspirators, but there are far from being only conspirators. There are antipasses, the far right, the far left, the right, the left, there’s everything, and that’s what makes this event interesting. We are faced with a power which, instead of trying to dialogue, to understand this anger, adds to the pyromaniac side. »
At the end of the day on Sunday, several hundred vehicles had already stopped in Lille, near the Belgian border. In Brussels, vehicles will only be tolerated in the large Heysel car park C in the northeast of the city. In Belgium, malicious obstruction of traffic and rebellion against a police officer can be punishable by prison, the authorities reminded.