Macron talks tough after Yellow Jackets riot in Paris
Those responsible for violence ‘will be identified and held
accountable for their actions before the courts,’ president says.
By HELEN
COLLIS 12/1/18, 1:25 PM CET Updated
12/1/18, 9:31 PM CET
Tear gas surrounds protesters as they clash with riot police
in Paris | Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Saturday that rioters who
clashed with police under the Arc de Triomphe, set fire to vehicles and looted
shops would face justice after Paris was rocked by further protests from the
Yellow Jackets movement.
Riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse
thousands of demonstrators from the amorphous movement against gasoline price
hikes, named for the fluorescent yellow jackets worn by protesters. The
protests, which erupted across France three weeks ago, caught Macron off guard
and have triggered violent clashes with police and widespread disruption.
Under the Arc de Triomphe, protesters threw rocks and broke
down barriers as clouds of tear gas swirled around them. In other parts of the
city, vehicles were set on fire and shops were looted.
More than 260 people were detained and at least 95 were
injured, including 14 members of the security forces, franceinfo reported.
Smaller demonstrations took place in other parts of France.
“What happened today in Paris has nothing to do with the
peaceful expression of legitimate anger. There is no reason that justifies
security forces being attacked, businesses looted, public or private buildings
set on fire, bystanders or journalists threatened, or the Arc de Triomphe
defiled in this way,” Macron said at a G20 summit in Buenos Aires.
“The perpetrators of this violence do not want change, they
don’t want any improvement, they want chaos. They betray the causes they claim
to serve, and and which they manipulate. They will be identified and held
accountable for their actions before the courts,” Macron told reporters. “I
will always respect protest, I will always listen to opponents, but I will
never accept violence.”
Up to 5,000 security personnel were drafted in this weekend
after cafes and shop fronts were vandalized and barricades set alight during
previous protests.
Although Saturday’s demonstration was not due to start until
the afternoon, clashes between protesters and police began in the morning. TV
footage showed protesters surging at security barricades and fires burning in
the streets.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Twitter in the
morning that around 200 peaceful protesters had gathered on the Champs-Elysées
while 1,500 “disrupters” had massed outside the security perimeter formed by
police and were trying to break through. “Our security forces are responding
and pushing back the thugs,” he said.
By the afternoon, a total of 75,000 people across France
were believed to have taken part in Saturday’s protests, according to the
Ministry of the Interior. Onlookers described scenes of chaos, not only in the
center of Paris but also in several other districts.
Street furniture was set alight and police vehicles were
attacked with metal street barricades. There were scenes of rarely seen
violence, said Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, franceinfo reported.
Geoffroy Boulard, mayor of the city’s 17th district, said
security measures were not sufficient. In a Twitter post showing burning debris
in the street, he said there were “unacceptable and sadly predictable” scenes
of chaos, adding that he had asked police for a wider security perimeter.
A total of 282,000 people protested on November 17, the
first day of national demonstrations, while the number fell to 106,000 a week
later, according to official figures reported by Libération.
Hans von der Burchard contributed reporting from Buenos
Aires.
Mélenchon e Le Pen pedem eleições em França
02.12.2018 às 14h25
Reunião extarordinária do governo francês no Palácio do
Eliseu terminou mas não há lugar a qualquer comunicação. Extrema-direita e
extrema-esquerda exigem o regresso às urnas
EXPRESSO
A Liga dos Direitos do Homem considera inadequada a adopção
do Estado de Emergência, uma das medidas preconizadas pelo Ministro do
Interior, Christophe Castaner, para lidar com a violência que tem surgidos nos
últimos fins de semana devido a ações encetadas pelo movimento dos “coletes
amarelos”. “O governo já dispõe de meios legais consideráveis devido à recente
integração no direito comum de poderes excepcionais. O diálogo democrático não
se estabelece usando métodos que atentam contra o direito de manifestação e que
podem ser entendidos como formas de criminalizar o movimento social”, lê-se no
comunicado da LDH.
A declaração do Estado de Emergência pode resultar da
reunião que o Presidente de França, Emmanuel Macron, manteve hoje a partir das
10h50 (hora de Lisboa) no Palácio do Eliseu após regressar de Buenos Aires,
onde esteve ontem como membro do G20. Nenhum anúncio foi tornado público após a
reunião, onde também estiveram o ministro do Interior, Christophe Castaner, o
secretário de Estado do Interior, Laurent Nuñez, e o ministro da Ecologia,
François de Rugy. As agências Reuters e AFP estão a noticiar que Macron se
remeterá ao silêncio ao longo deste domingo.
Após o encontro, Macron foi visto a passear nalgumas das
artérias de Paris mais afectadas pela violência. Segundo o jornal “Le Monde”, a
comitiva tem sido apupada, sendo muito poucos os parisienses que aplaudem à sua
passagem.
Na France 3, Marine Le Pen, a líder da extrema-direita,
assegurou que “não via como sair por cima” desta situação, apelando à
realização de eleições: “é preciso dissolver a Assembleia Nacional para que
tenham lugar eleições segundo o método proporcional”. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, o
líder da França Insubmissa extrema-esquerda, também reivindicou, na BFM TV,
novas eleições e a anulação da subida do preço dos combustíveis anunciada pelo
Governo.
Durante os motins que ontem se verificaram, o Arco do
Triunfo foi assaltado e as suas instalações viram-se pilhadas por alguns
manifestantes. O mesmo sucedeu a outros edifícios simbólicos da república como
o Jardim das Tulherias. "Macron Démission" é a palavra de ordem,
escrita em várias paredes, do movimento dos "coletes amarelos".
O Ministério do Interior francês declarou que os
acontecimentos de ontem provocaram 263 feridos em todo o país, entre os quais
81 elementos das forças de segurança. No território francês foram detidas 682
pessoas, das quais 412 em Paris.
France is deeply fractured. Gilets jaunes are just a symptom
Christophe Guilluy
The author of a seminal account of French society charts
widening cultural divisions
Sun 2 Dec 2018 06.00 GMT
From the 1980s onwards, it was clear there was a price to be
paid for western societies adapting to a new economic model and that price was
sacrificing the European and American working class. No one thought the fallout
would hit the bedrock of the lower-middle class, too. It’s obvious now,
however, that the new model not only weakened the fringes of the proletariat
but society as a whole.
The paradox is this is not a result of the failure of the
globalised economic model but of its success. In recent decades, the French
economy, like the European and US economies, has continued to create wealth. We
are thus, on average, richer. The problem is at the same time unemployment,
insecurity and poverty have also increased. The central question, therefore, is
not whether a globalised economy is efficient, but what to do with this model
when it fails to create and nurture a coherent society?
In France, as in all western countries, we have gone in a
few decades from a system that economically, politically and culturally
integrates the majority into an unequal society that, by creating ever more
wealth, benefits only the already wealthy.
The change is not down to a conspiracy, a wish to cast aside
the poor, but to a model where employment is increasingly polarised. This comes
with a new social geography: employment and wealth have become more and more
concentrated in the big cities. The deindustrialised regions, rural areas,
small and medium-size towns are less and less dynamic. But it is in these
places – in “peripheral France” (one could also talk of peripheral America or
peripheral Britain) – that many working-class people live. Thus, for the first
time, “workers” no longer live in areas where employment is created, giving
rise to a social and cultural shock.
'Workers' no longer
live in areas where employment is created, giving rise to a social and cultural
shock
It is in this France périphérique that the gilets jaunes
movement was born. It is also in these peripheral regions that the western
populist wave has its source. Peripheral America brought Trump to the White
House. Peripheral Italy – mezzogiorno, rural areas and small northern
industrial towns – is the source of its populist wave. This protest is carried
out by the classes who, in days gone by, were once the key reference point for
a political and intellectual world that has forgotten them.
So if the hike in the price of fuel triggered the yellow
vest movement, it was not the root cause. The anger runs deeper, the result of
an economic and cultural relegation that began in the 80s. At the same time,
economic and land logics have locked up the elite world. This confinement is
not only geographical but also intellectual. The globalised metropolises are
the new citadels of the 21st century – rich and unequal, where even the former
lower-middle class no longer has a place. Instead, large global cities work on
a dual dynamic: gentrification and immigration. This is the paradox: the open
society results in a world increasingly closed to the majority of working
people.
The economic divide between peripheral France and the
metropolises illustrates the separation of an elite and its popular hinterland.
Western elites have gradually forgotten a people they no longer see. The impact
of the gilets jaunes, and their support in public opinion (eight out of 10
French people approve of their actions), has amazed politicians, trade unions
and academics, as if they have discovered a new tribe in the Amazon.
The point, remember, of the gilet jaune is to ensure its
wearer is visible on the road. And whatever the outcome of this conflict, the
gilets jaunes have won in terms of what really counts: the war of cultural
representation. Working-class and lower middle-class people are visible again
and, alongside them, the places where they live.
Their need in the first instance is to be respected, to no
longer be thought of as “deplorable”. Michael Sandel is right when he points
out the inability of the elites to take the aspirations of the poorest
seriously. These aspirations are simple: the preservation of their social and
cultural capital and work. For this to be successful we must end the elite
“secession” and adapt the political offers of left and right to their demands.
This cultural revolution is a democratic and societal imperative – no system
can remain if it does not integrate the majority of its poorest citizens.
Christophe Guilluy is the author of Twilight of the Elites:
Prosperity, Periphery and the Future of France
Vai ser declarado estado de emergência? “Para mim não há
tabu. Nenhuma medida pode ser excluída”, admitiu o ministro do Interior.
INÊS CHAÍÇA 2 de Dezembro de 2018, 9:37
Este sábado, um pouco por toda a França, viveram-se momentos
de caos. Depois de um dia marcado pela violência, naquela que foi a terceira
manifestação dos “coletes amarelos”, que protestam contra a perda de poder de
compra e o aumento do imposto dos combustíveis, o ministro do Interior,
Christophe Castaner, não põe de lado a hipótese de declarar estado de
emergência no país. Castaner, Emmanuel Macron e o primeiro-ministro Edouard
Philippe estiveram reunidos na manhã deste domingo para discutir essa hipótese.
“Para mim não há tabu. Nenhuma medida pode ser excluída”,
respondeu Castaner aos microfones da BFMTV, na noite de sábado, quando
questionado sobre a possibilidade de declarar estado de emergência. “Vamos
estudar os procedimentos que nos permitam garantir a segurança”, completou.
“Tudo o que permita isso não é, para mim, um tabu. Estou pronto para tudo.”
Palavras ecoadas pelo porta-voz do Governo, Benjamin
Griveaux, que admitiu que a administração Macron estava a ponderar declarar
estado de emergência. O Presidente está aberto ao diálogo, diz Griveaux, mas
não está disposto a voltar atrás nas medidas apresentadas.
O estado de emergência é declarado, de acordo com a lei francesa,
em “em casos de perigo iminente, como resultado de quebras na ordem pública ou
no caso de ameaças, pela sua natureza e gravidade”. É uma ferramenta de último
recurso que só pode ser declarada num período máximo de 12 dias — que podem ser
prolongados pelo Presidente.
O estado de emergência reforça os poderes do Governo e do
Presidente da República. Entre outras medidas, pode implicar:
Hora de recolher obrigatório;
Proibição de ajuntamentos de pessoas;
Reforço de segurança em locais como escolas, aeroportos ou
estações de comboios e metro e restabelecimento do controlo de fronteiras;
Encerramento de locais públicos, como museus, teatros ou
restaurantes.
Macron convocou uma reunião de emergência no Eliseu para o
fim da manhã deste domingo. Vai encontrar-se com o primeiro-ministro Edouard
Philippe, o ministro do Interior, Christopher Castaner e os “serviços
competentes” para tentar encontrar uma reposta para o conflito.
Na manhã deste domingo, Macron visitou o Arco do Triunfo e a
Praça da Estrela, palco das manifestações de sábado.
Da extrema-direita e da esquerda já se ouvem pedidos de
eleições antecipadas. Marine Le Pen admitiu, na manhã deste domingo, que não vê
como “sair a bem [desta crise política], sem se regressar às urnas”. Jean-Luc
Melénchon afirmou, por seu turno, que "só há uma maneira de decidir, é
pelo voto, e isso chama-se dissolução”.
O Presidente francês já se manifestou sobre os protestos
deste sábado. Emmanuel Macron, que regressou da na Argentina onde esteve para a
cimeira do G20, condenou todos os “que apenas querem o caos” e sublinhou que
nunca aceitará violência.
A manifestação do sábado passado, na qual participaram cerca
de 136 mil pessoas, de acordo com o Ministério do Interior, resultou em mais de
400 detidos e mais de uma centena de feridos, entre os quais polícias. Dezenas
de estações de metro da capital foram encerradas e lojas evacuadas. Um condutor
foi morto durante a noite num acidente numa barricada no sudeste de França,
avança a Reuters, citando fonte policial. É a terceira morte desde o início dos
protestos dos “coletes amarelos”.
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