More than one million protesters took to the streets across France on Thursday as President Emmanuel Macron moves to raise the official retirement age from 62 to 64. “Late Thursday the Interior Ministry said 1.09 million people had turned out for protests, whereas the CGT union claimed that figure was in fact 3.5 million,” Germany’s state-run DW TV reported Friday.
Hundred of demonstrators were arrested amid reports of arson and violent clashes with the police. “On Friday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told news outlet CNews authorities had arrested 457 protesters and that roughly 440 security force members had been injured,” the broadcaster added.
The protesters were joined by the members of the “Black Block” group, a far-left anarchist outfit with a violent track record in France and Germany. “Police fired tear gas and fought with violent black-clad anarchists in Paris and across France on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the pension age,” Reuters reported Thursday.
The French special police unit Brav-M, which was formed in 2019 to crackdown on the Yellow vests movement, was accused of “brutality” against demonstrators and rioters in Paris.
An audio clip “[f]eaturing slaps, sexual remarks, threats and boasts, this recording, which Le Monde was able to authenticate, sheds a harsh light on the behavior of police officers, in total contradiction with their ethical rules and with the law,” the French newspaper Le Monde disclosed.
The TV channel France24 reported the accusations against the special unit:
They ride in pairs, are armed with handguns, expandable batons and tear gas grenades, and have been specially trained to prevent protests from spiralling out of control. But since France’s pension protests began, officers belonging to France’s special Brav-M motorbike unit have increasingly been accused of taking the law into their own hands, intimidating and threatening people, and in some cases, resorting to the use of excessive force.On Friday, four days after Paris was the scene of one of the most violent demonstrations in years as hundreds of thousands of people thronged the streets to protest the government’s pension reform, French daily Le Monde and online video broadcaster Loopsider published a troubling audio recording. (…)Brav-M saw the light of the day in the spring of 2019, in the midst of France’s Yellow Vest movement, after suspected anarchists vandalised and plundered shops and cafés along Paris’s famed Champs-Elysées boulevard and set fire to the renowned Le Fouquet restaurant.
With Paris literally burning, President Macron urged King Charles III to “postpone” his visit to France—the British monarch’s first state visit after taking the throne.
“King Charles III’s state visit to France has been postponed after a request by President Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street says,” the BBC reported Saturday.
The French president said “‘we would not be sensible and would lack common sense’ to go ahead after unions called a day of pension protests during the visit,” the UK broadcaster added.
As prices rise in the wake of surging energy costs and mass-migration eats into the French welfare system, President Macron has decided to raise the age of retirement without a vote in the nation’s parliament.
France is not alone. To keep the bloated welfare states afloat and provide for the illegal migrants swarming Europe, many EU countries are enforcing new laws to retain their aging populations in the workforce. The current retirement age in Germany is 65, but the Socialist-led government wants to raise it to 67 by 2031.
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