Cars were torched and shops burnt in central Paris last night after the seventh big protest in eight days against the government’s controversial employment law ended in clashes between hooded youths and riot police.
The youths, some of whom had come in from the suburbs, grouped on the pavements on the Esplanade des Invalides, one of Paris’s main boulevards, and armed themselves with baseball bats, wooden sticks and metal bars.
As students and sixth formers moved towards the city centre chanting protests against the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, and the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, the armed youths began to snake up the side of the crowd. Covering their faces with tracksuit hoods and scarves, they moved fast in groups of 20 to 30. Several car windows had been smashed and a bus shelter destroyed.
Two hours later, when the protesters reached Les Invalides, hundreds of riot police had sealed off the entrances to streets leading to government ministries. Several groups of teenagers began smashing cars and shop windows. One shop was set alight and five cars were upturned and torched as riot police began pushing the protesters back.
De Villepin is now embattled on all fronts over his controversial ”first employment contract”, known as the CPE. Sarkozy has distanced himself this week, suggesting there should be a six-month trial period for the law, which would make it easier for employers to sack workers under 26. The government says such flexibility will encourage companies to hire young people and slash unemployment. The daily Le Parisien on Thursday quoted an unnamed political source close to the President, Jacques Chirac, saying that if the controversy did not subside De Villepin could be sacked.
Trade unions on Thursday agreed they would meet De Villepin for talks but it was unlikely they would call off a strike planned for next Tuesday. With transport and air workers already pledging support, the strike was being dubbed Black Tuesday by one French paper.
As the protests continued, pavements were littered with glass, parked cars had had all their windows put out, and benches had been ripped up to throw at police. One tourist took cellphone photos, saying it was a portrait of modern France.
A university student who had been at the protest and watched the violence erupt said: ”It was both students and young people. But the police have arrested a hell of a lot of people who had nothing to do with it. They are fascists.”
A town planning student, Viviane Macé, said: ”Bands of young guys have been running past the protesters with baseball bats all afternoon. It is a small minority of people but I can totally understand what is going through their minds. They feel as desperate as we do and they have got no other way to express themselves. They feel violence is the only action to take. I think some people might not even know what the CPE is. It says a lot about our society that people feel the need to express themselves with bats and metal bars.”
One woman who had come to protest from the Seine-Saint-Denis region, which experienced the worst of last autumn’s youth riots, said: ”There are now kids in the worst areas of the suburbs who are being born into families where the parents have never worked. It is desperate.” – Guardian Unlimited Â