Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

PROTESTS

Protester fighting for life after France water protest clashes: prosecutor

A protester with trauma to the head was fighting for his life on Sunday after clashes with police during a demonstration over water storage facilities in France, a prosecutor said.

Published: 26 March 2023 18:26 CEST
Mobile riot police riding quad bikes fire teargas shells towards protesters during a demonstration to protest against the construction of huge water reserves for agricultural irrigation in Sainte-Soline
Mobile riot police fire teargas towards protesters during a water protest in Sainte-Soline on March 25, 2023. One protester was fighting for his life on Sunday after clashes with the police on Saturday. Photo: THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP

Organisers of the protest in the southwestern village of Sainte-Soline on Saturday had previously said one demonstrator was gravely wounded.

According to the latest figures from the prosecutor’s office in the early afternoon on Sunday, seven protesters were injured, including three who had to be taken to hospital.

Twenty-nine policemen also sustained injuries, two of them badly enough that they had to be hospitalised.

Prosecutor Julien Wattebled said a 30-year-old man with a head trauma was fighting for his life after being among the three protesters admitted for emergency treatment.

A special inquiry had been opened “to determine the exact nature” of the injuries of these three people and “the circumstances in which” they received them, he said.

The other two badly injured demonstrators were a 19-year-old woman with a facial trauma and a 27-year-old man with a broken foot.

Campaigners in Sainte-Soline were trying to stop the construction of giant water “basins” to irrigate crops, which they say will distort access to water amid drought conditions.

Once they arrived at the construction site, which was defended by the police and gendarmes, clashes quickly broke out between the more radical activists and the security forces, AFP correspondents said.

Protesters threw projectiles including improvised explosives, while police responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.

The clashes in Sainte-Soline came after days of unrest elsewhere in France over President Emmanuel Macron’s pensions reform, which forced the cancellation of a visit by Britain’s King Charles III.

Outrage over Macron imposing the bill without a parliamentary vote has sparked daily clashes between protesters and police in French cities in recent days.

But hundreds of thousands of French people have also since January peacefully marched against the reform, which includes raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Security forces have this week faced criticism for their heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the protests.

On Friday, the Council of Europe warned that sporadic violence in protests “cannot justify excessive use of force”.

READ ALSO:

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

STRIKES

Paris garbage collectors strike as city readies for Olympics

Paris garbage collectors went on strike on Tuesday, two-and-a-half months before the French capital is due to host the Summer Olympic Games.

Published: 15 May 2024 09:44 CEST
Paris garbage collectors strike as city readies for Olympics

Paris rubbish collectors had warned of possible strikes over the summer, raising the spectre of piles of trash roasting in summer heat on the streets as hordes of athletes and tourists descend on the City of Light.

ANALYSIS: How likely is strike chaos during the Paris Olympics?

Unions and City Hall differed on how many of the collectors had walked off the job on Tuesday.

Paris city hall said that 16 percent of staff, or one in six, were striking.

“Collection services were little affected today,” a City Hall official told AFP, without providing further details.

But the CGT union branch that represents garbage collectors, hailed a “strong” mobilisation effort, saying that 70-90 percent of staff, depending on the arrondissement, had walked off the job.

CGT said that some 400 striking workers had “occupied” the building housing city hall’s human resources department on Tuesday morning.

City Hall put the number at 100 and said they had left by 12 noon.

CGT had warned that walkouts would occur on several days in May and then continue from July 1st to September 8th.

Summer Olympics will run in Paris from July 26th until August 11th, and the Paralympic Games from August 28th to September 8th.

Refuse workers in the Paris region are demanding an extra €400 per month and a one-off €1,900 bonus for those working during the Olympics, when French workers traditionally take time off for the summer holidays.

The mayor’s office had previously told AFP that it would extend bonuses of between €600 and €1,900 that it had already announced for workers contributing to the Olympics effort to refuse collectors.

The mayor of Paris’s 17th arrondissement, Geoffroy Boulard, said the strike was “irresponsible”.

“To take hostage not only Parisians but also tourists and visitors is also an attack on France’s world image,” he said.

In March last year, a three-week strike by rubbish collectors against unpopular pensions reform saw more than 10,000 tonnes of waste piled in Paris streets at its height.

Images of the heaps of trash, some mounting several metres high, were seen around the world.

SHOW COMMENTS