2023-05-02 04:50:17
A policeman in law enforcement uniform collapses on his back, boulevard Voltaire in Paris, between a building porch and a barber hair salon. A blaze devours his stomach. Colleagues rush at him and whitewash him with dry ice, while others protect them from projectiles fired almost at point-blank range. Forced to ruthlessly charge the hostile group crowded together on the same sidewalk.
The flames are smothered in less than ten seconds, probably the longest of his life for this member of an intervention company that his comrades help to get up before his exfiltration. He will be hospitalized, burnt in the 2nd degree on the level of the face, the lower abdomen and the wrists. The shocking scene of this policeman hit by an incendiary device will remain as the peak of the violence which continued to enamel the demonstration of this Monday, May 1 in the capital.
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The Parisian gathering of more than half a million people, according to the CGT (112,000, according to the Interior), is patient this Monday at 2 p.m. Greeted by the crowd, a clap of thunder tears the Parisian sky. As waterspouts descend, the deafening sounds of rockets, fireworks and incendiary devices are already ringing out. Massed on the Place de la République, the official procession of May 1, placed under the sign of the contestation of the pension reform, is barely moving – it will later split in two – when the first clashes between forces of the order and black blocks. Upstream of the head of the parade, for nearly four hours, all along the Boulevard Voltaire and up to the Place de la Nation, a wind of violence blows, throwing projectiles and tear gas.
First charges, first collisions
In the kind of “no man’s land” that is created between the first cordon of mobile gendarmes, which very quickly moves away, and the bulk of the gathering, several hundred demonstrators dressed in black, faces concealed, attack the windows banks and shops or around the glass edges of newsstands and bus shelters.
“Long live the wind, long live the wind, long live the vandalism”, tags a hooded guy with a pink bomb. “Macron resignation”, applies to draw another in red on a facade while the anti-police slogan “ACAB” (“all cops are bastards”) springs on walls.
First charges, first collisions. Projectiles of all kinds respond to tear gas and defensive grenades. Place Voltaire, a cluster of silhouettes in black manages to smash the entrance to the McDo, however barricaded, before scattering. A seller of sprigs of lily of the valley hastily folds up his stall. A man shouts into his megaphone: “For all the demonstrators, – 20% at McDonalds! On presentation of your protester card of course! “.
“Breaking, it’s always us who are going to pay for it. Only the negative remains”
Robert and Martine, 70, LFI stickers on their chests, tried to dissuade the thugs: “Impossible. These young people are mad. And the procession does not advance! “, they curse.
Leaning on his bike, glasses studded with raindrops, Jean-Michel, 66, carefully observes the ballet of black blocks. “Demonstrating is enshrined in the Constitution. Breaking up, it’s always us who are going to pay for it. Only the negative remains”, regrets this former civil servant at the Post Office, whose presence is motivated “by the social crisis and the economic crisis”.
Suddenly it charges and it runs. Eyes reddened, we stop at the next street corner, where another barrage of uniforms closes the passage. ” It’s hot ! It’s hot ! shouts a hilarious man into his phone.
Tension rises in Nation
The situation freezes. Under the boos, the charges redouble. A cordon of gendarmes quickly extracts an arrested man. Two water launchers come into action before retreating. An old man curses: “It’s a mess, I’m leaving. »
Thomas, 25, looking for a job, wanted to demonstrate on May 1, “because it’s an international gathering and social problems are everywhere in the world”. He glances at the sky: “The drones, I haven’t seen them. If it is still a tool to repress…”
Gradually, the silhouettes in black give way to the parade troops. Shortly before 6 p.m., the tension rose again a notch in Nation, with the start of a fire lit between a pharmacy and a café. The flames, dangerously licking a building facade, are extinguished thanks to the water cannon of the police.
VIDEO. Demonstration of May 1: violent fire in Paris, a police truck takes out its water cannons
These scenes of violence, described as “unacceptable” by Élisabeth Borne, are not limited to Paris. They broke out earlier in the day, during or on the sidelines of parades in Lyon, Nantes or Angers, in particular. In the capital of Gaul, where we deplore numerous degradations, the use of a drone made it possible to arrest the alleged perpetrators of an intrusion into a town hall, and about twenty people who had entered a business. In Nantes, the clashes lasted a good part of the afternoon, with around 800 black blocks, “number never seen” from police sources. These incidents left five injured, including a policeman and a demonstrator, seriously injured in one hand.
According to figures given by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, this Monday evening, at least 108 police and gendarmes were injured, including twenty in Paris. There were 291 people arrested, including 90 in the capital where Place de la Nation remained under tension after 8 p.m.
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