11:06 p.m., July 31, 2021
“Sanitary terror”, “I am neither a guinea pig, nor a QR code”, “Liberty, freedom” … The slogans end up being broken in. For the third weekend of protest, 204,090 people (according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior) marched on Saturday in 186 cities in France to protest, in an often virulent atmosphere, against the extension of the health pass. They outnumbered the 161,000 opponents gathered the previous Saturday, and the 110,000 gathered a week earlier.
In the capital, nearly 14,250 demonstrators beat the pavement (against 11,000 the Saturday before) according to Place Beauvau. More than 3,000 police and gendarmes had been deployed to prevent the overflows; access to the Champs-Élysées was blocked, but that did not prevent incidents. The main demonstration, part of the Villiers metro station, in the 17th arrondissement, was punctuated by clashes. On his arrival at Place de la Bastille, the police responded to the projectile jets with tear gas and the use of water cannons.
Read also – Aurélien Taché against the health pass: “We ask citizens to control each other”
A second procession, starting from the Montparnasse station, in the 6th arrondissement, at the call of the former number two of the National Front and president of the Patriots Florian Philippot, rallied the Ministry of Health. The president of the pro-frexit UPR (Republican Popular Union) party, François Asselineau, positive for Covid, had to forfeit. But many demonstrators, most of them without masks, carried blue-white-red flags. Two journalists reporting images from AFP, who came to cover the event, were the target of spitting and cursing.
In the provinces, the wave of protesters has also grown. They were, according to the police, 5,500 in Bordeaux, more than 1,200 in Lyon, 3,200 in Strasbourg, more than 2,000 in Lille, a little less than 4,000 in Nantes… In the South-East, no less than 38,000 people joined at the different steps. In Montpellier, the demonstration brought together 10,000 people, a figure much higher than last week. A pharmacist was the target of the demonstrators while performing screening tests. The record in the Var was reached in Toulon, where nearly 13,000 people expressed their anger.
Opponents with a varied profile
Grouped around the hashtags Manif31juillet and PassDeLaHonte on social networks, the opponents had very varied profiles. Some like Nadège, 53 years old, yellow vest for more than two years, clearly displayed antivax: “We have what, six months of hindsight? It is not a vaccine, it is a gene therapy, even a genocide of mass.” Ditto for Stéphanie, 42, a home nanny: “I refuse to be vaccinated, whether it’s me or my children. I will take them out of school if it becomes compulsory.”
Others, more moderate, especially rejected the obligation of the sanitary pass. “Me, I’m a waiter, not a cop!” Protested Stéphane, 47, a restaurant employee. “We need restrictions when we are in an epidemic situation, but we discuss them together, we agree and we apply them”, argues a teacher from the Paris region, herself vaccinated.
With the extension of the health pass to cafes and trains scheduled for August 9, the protest could rally new dissatisfied people. According to a provisional report, the police carried out 19 arrests on Saturday (including 10 in Paris); three officers were injured in the capital.
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