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Demos against Macron, Le Pen and the health pass planned in Paris

This Saturday - the mid-point of the second round of the presidential election - will be marked by multiple demonstrations in Paris. Here's what is happening.

Published: 15 April 2022 14:26 CEST

Demos against Macron, Le Pen and the health pass planned in Paris

Multiple demonstrations are planned for Paris this weekend. Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP

If you’re in central Paris over the weekend, expect to see at least one demo.

Anti far-right

The one that is expected to be the largest is a union-organisation demonstration against the far right.

Jointly organised by the League of Human Rights with several unions (CGT, FSE, FSU, FAGE, Unef) the protest is to express anger over the presence of far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election.

Numerous campaign and pressure groups have also said they will be attending this, including Greenpeace France, Osez le Féminisme, SOS Racisme, the Cimade, Marche des Solidarités, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth and 350.org.

A spokesman said: “The extreme right is once again present in the second round of the presidential election, with an unprecedented level of votes. We refuse to see it come to power.”

The demo starts at 2pm on Saturday at Place de la Nation, moving to Place de la République.

Organisers have also called for demonstrations across France.

A march in Marseille is set to start at the Vieux Port at 2pm on Saturday and a demonstration is to take place on Wednesday, April 20th, in front of the Strasbourg central campus law school with the aim of “making the voice of youth heard in the face of the Macron-Le Pen battle”.

Anti Macron

Not taking this lying down, the far right have organised a demonstration against Emmanuel Macron – Le Pen’s rival in the second round of the election on April 24th.

The demonstration is organised by Les Patriotes, a group headed by anti-vaxxer Florian Phillipott, who is a former member of Rassemblement National and remains close to Le Pen.

Organisers say the event is anti-Macron and will call on people to vote for his rival.

It starts at 3pm in Place Fontenoy in the 7th arrondissement.

Anti health pass

The health pass has been scrapped for almost all venues in France, but a small group of ‘yellow vests’ are still protesting about it.

This demo will start at 11am in Place de l’Italie, moving to Place de la Nation, while a second anti-health pass march will follow the route of the anti far-right march, leaving at 1pm.

The anti-health pass protests have been happening every Saturday since last summer, but although they initially attracted tens of thousands of participants, in recent months the turnout has numbered no more than a couple of dozen.

Pro Ukraine

And finally a march showing solidarity with Ukraine against the Russian invasion will go in the opposite direction, starting at Place de la République and heading to Place de la Nation, on Saturday afternoon.

This has been a regular event since the invasion 50 days ago.

Member comments

Anonymous - 15 April 2022 at 18:03 CEST

My wife has just announced that, as part of her French birthright, she will on Saturday be leading a demonstration against demonstrations.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.