Three demonstrations took place in the city center of Rennes this Saturday afternoon, October 22. A “Radical Pride” in Place Sainte-Anne, a rally at the call of the Reconquête party on the Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle to demand “justice for Lola” and a counter-demonstration to this far-right demonstration.
It was in the early afternoon that the demonstrators of these three gatherings gathered.
The first, shortly after 2 p.m. Place Sainte-Anne, met for a “Radical Pride” in order to defend the rights of LGBT+ people and denounce racism and liberalism.
The STAR had made the decision to close the Sainte-Anne metro station during the rally.
Several hundred people who began to march in a procession before being deflected by the police. The latter feared that they would join the Charles-de-Gaulle esplanade where a far-right rally was held.
A few hundred meters further, a hundred supporters of Eric Zemmour’s party, Reconquest!, had gathered under the banner of “Justice for Lola”. A large majority of men, some of whom are masked.
It was to the slogans of “We are at home”, “For Lola” or even “Migrants assassins” and to the song of the Marseillaise that the hundred people demonstrated. A rally to denounce the murder last week of this 12-year-old girl in the Paris region, while the family of the young victim has made it known in recent hours that they are asking to stop using “the name and image of their child for political purposes”. A murder that is the subject of a highly criticized political recovery.
Criticism refuted by Régis Barbier de Préaudau, candidate in the 8th constituency of Ille-et-Vilaine (Rennes) during the last legislative elections and present on the spot. For him, the reason for this gathering is to “to denounce this heinous assassination which should never have been”. According to him, [aucun autre participant à cette manifestation n’a souhaité répondre à nos questions, NDLR], the woman suspected of murdering little Lola and who was under an obligation to leave French territory since September 21, 2022, “had nothing to do in France”. And to add: “There are too many assassinations and too many attacks in France. I’m afraid it’s not over. We want better border control and that the OQTFs [Obligation de quitter le territoire, NDLR], go away. S files have nothing to do in France”.
The gathering had been placed under close surveillance by the prefecture. A dozen CRS buses had been positioned near the Charles-de-Gaulle esplanade.
It is that a few tens of meters from this same esplanade was held a counter-demonstration at the call, among others, of the collective We All 35, or even the Solidarity and NPA parties. The participants objected to “political recovery” by Reconquest supporters! of the murder of young Lola and wanted to show that far-right ideas “nauseous” should not pass in order to “do not leave 1 cm on the far right”.
For Milo, member of the feminist collective We All 35, the mobilization of Reconquest! on this case is “just a call to hate, a call to violence that we reject”, racist and xenophobic discourse.
For Gilles, a 72-year-old from Rennes who rarely demonstrates, it is important to mobilize against the ideas conveyed by the far right following the “that terrible murder of Lola”. “All of this has a racist destination that stigmatizes part of the population. Which is absolutely infamous. We reproduce a whole set of patterns that have happened tons of times. There is a whole ideology behind it. It smells rancid. It’s unbearable. Today there is a little music, things that are becoming commonplace and we have to be extremely careful. And, we are not careful.
The participants of the two rallies as well as those of the radical Pride who paraded in town dispersed in the middle of the afternoon.