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IN PICTURES: Clashes on Champs-Elysées as ‘Freedom Convoys’ enter Paris

Paris police fired tear gas as they cleared protesters from 'Freedom Convoys' who had gathered on the Champs-Elysées on Saturday, defying a ban on entering the French capital.

Published: 12 February 2022 14:15 CET
Updated: 12 February 2022 17:29 CET
IN PICTURES: Clashes on Champs-Elysées as 'Freedom Convoys' enter Paris
Police trucks are parked in front of the Arc de Triomphe, on the Champs Elysees in Paris. Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

Around 100 protesters made it onto the Champs-Elysées – policed fired tear gas as the cleared the protesters, many of whom were issued with fines, with the avenue cleared by 5pm.

Many cars and camper vans that had been part of the convoy were towed away.

The convoys, which are made up of a loose collective of anti-vaxxers, those opposed to the vaccine pass and people protesting against the rising cost of living, set off from towns across France on Thursday, with the aim of converging on the capital.

The Paris police préfecture announced that the demonstrations were banned, and over Friday night and Saturday morning thousands of officers have deployed at the city gates to keep the convoys out. 

By Saturday lunchtime, 5 arrests had been made and 283 fines issued.

Many bars and cafés in the Champs-Elysées area closed up, fearful of violence and vandalism.

Paris police tweeted pictures of the vehicles they say they will use to clear the streets, and also some of the weapons that the say had been confiscated from protesters.

Police had also deployed armoured vehicles to keep the Champs-Elysées clear, an echo of the days of the ‘yellow vest’ protesters, who were banned from the famous thoroughfare after shops were trashed and torched after a demonstration in December 2018.

Police officers stop vehicles at Porte de Saint-Cloud, western Paris. Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP

Aurelie M., a 42-year-old administrative assistant in a Parisian company, complained that the health pass meant she could no longer take a long-distance TGV train even if she tested negative for Covid in a home test.

“There’s so much inconsistency and unfairness,” she told AFP, noting that commuters could still cram onto a crowded Paris metro without proof of vaccination.

Sixty-five-year-old factory worker Jean-Paul Lavigne said he travelled across the country from the southwestern town of Albi to protest fuel, food and electricity price hikes as well as the pressure on people to get vaccinated.

On Friday, president Emmanuel Macron called for calm, saying he understand the “fatigue” with the health restrictions.

“This fatigue also leads to anger. I understand it and I respect it. But I call for the utmost calm,” he told the Ouest-France newspaper.

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POLITICS

Why is France accusing Azerbaijan of stirring tensions in New Caledonia?

France's government has no doubt that Azerbaijan is stirring tensions in New Caledonia despite the vast geographical and cultural distance between the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian state and the French Pacific territory.

Published: 17 May 2024 08:48 CEST
Why is France accusing Azerbaijan of stirring tensions in New Caledonia?

Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.

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