(Paris) The prefect of police has banned the gathering announced Friday in Paris of “freedom convoys” from all over the country to denounce health restrictions, without deterring their participants who are still firmly determined to join the capital.
Posted at 10:50 a.m.
Several processions of this movement inspired by the protest born in Canada left on Wednesday from Nice, Bayonne or Perpignan and continued to march on Thursday.
Its organizers define it as “the next stage” of the anti-government mobilization of “yellow vests” which agitated France for long weeks at the end of 2018-beginning of 2019, and opponents of the health passport.
In Paris, then in Brussels
All plan to meet in Paris on Friday evening and then to join Brussels for a “European convergence” on Monday February 14. However, the Belgian authorities have decided to deny them access to the capital, since they did not request it.
The Paris police headquarters announced Thursday the ban, from Friday to Monday, of this mobilization for “risks of disturbing public order”, as well as the establishment of a “specific device […] to prevent the blocking of roads, verbalize and challenge offenders”.
The prefect Didier Lallement gave “firmness instructions” to the police.
He recalled that obstructing traffic was punishable by two years’ imprisonment and that the organizer “of a prohibited demonstration” was liable to six months in prison and a fine of 7,500 euros. “The participants will be fined,” insisted the prefecture.
The lawyer Juan Branco announced Thursday that he had filed a summary freedom procedure before the administrative court of Paris against the decree of the prefect.
The return of the yellow vests
Not enough to discourage Adrien Wonner, a 27-year-old garbage collector and “yellow vest” who will leave Normandy. “We have organized this for long enough […] We will go to the capital no matter what,” he told AFP.
“There is no law preventing us from taking our car and going to Paris for a weekend. It’s impossible to prevent everyone from arriving, ”added Michel Audidier, a 65-year-old retiree who will leave Beauvais (Oise).
“They are afraid that it will cause a crowd effect, they see that it is rising! “, rejoiced Mathis Dubois, a young Charentais member of a convoy of some 250 vehicles which stopped at midday in Maine-de-Boixe, north of Angoulême (Charente).
On the outskirts of Brest, around 70 people gathered to hit the road in around forty vehicles. Among them, Xavier Le Gregam, a retiree, intends to follow a few steps, because “we are being robbed of a lot of freedoms”.
About 1,600 people were counted at the highest on Thursday, police sources told AFP, noting that the movement was fluctuating – many participants were just taking a few steps – and that the convoys included hardly any heavy trucks. .
The “movement is still very measured”, said these sources, adding that they do not see at this stage a “blocking strategy upstream of Paris”.
“Try something else”
Rémi Monde, one of the initiators of the movement, told AFP that the protesters’ main demand was “the withdrawal […] the health pass and all measures of constraint or pressure related to vaccination”, in addition to measures on purchasing power or the cost of energy.
“We demonstrated, and we can continue but we see that it only leads to confrontation, repression and violence”, he added, “we want to try something else, and see what will be the government’s response to peaceful and joyful people”.
These demonstrations come as authorities’ “Mister vaccine” Alain Fischer and government spokesman Gabriel Attal spoke on Wednesday of the end of the vaccination pass “by the end of March” or “beginning of April”.
The movement is “far from being solidly structured” but “this new mode of action, particularly media-based, could allow the various protest groups to regain new momentum”, further indicates a note from territorial intelligence, quoted by RTL and Le Parisien.
Questioned on Wednesday, government spokesman Gabriel Attal considered that the executive was “lucid, perfectly aware that there is a weariness vis-à-vis this epidemic and the measures” of restriction.
On Wednesday, the candidate of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, said she “understood” the movement while the number 2 of the far left party La France insoumise, Adrien Quatennens, “encouraged the Insoumis who wish to go there”. Conversely, the president of the deputies of the party Les Républicains Damien Abad said he saw convoys “of oppression”.