Violence erupts at protests over French labor reforms

Agence France-Presse

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Violence erupts at protests over French labor reforms

EPA

The police arrest 22 people at a protest over a government bill which will make it easier for struggling companies to fire workers

PARIS, France – Twenty-two people were arrested in Paris during clashes with police at a demonstration over labor reforms seen as threatening workers’ rights, French police said Saturday, April 16.

Some 3,000 people late Friday, April 15, gathered in the Place de la Republique for another of the “Up All Night” protests, which has been taking place since March 31 over a government bill that will make it easier for struggling companies to fire workers.

About 100 of the protesters set rubbish on fire and pelted police with bottles, cans and stones during the night, the Paris police department said in a statement.

Officers responded with tear gas and then forced the protesters out of the square.

The violence continued in the northeast of the capital, where two banks and a building site were vandalized.

The police said 22 people were arrested and 4 officers were injured.

Hundreds of people have been gathering every night for the past two weeks at the Place de la Republique, the vast square in eastern Paris where a memorial has been erected to the 130 victims of last November’s jihadist attacks.

The labor reforms are a unifying theme of the gatherings, but the “Nuit Debout” or “Up All Night” movement is broader, embracing a range of anti-establishment grievances.

The participants say they are drawing inspiration from the Spanish protesters known as the Indignados, who gave rise to the far-left Podemos party.

Sporadic violence erupted on April 9 when tens of thousands of people took to the streets in dozens of French cities as part of the movement.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Friday said 151 officers have been injured since the start of the protests, describing the incidents of violence as “intolerable”. – Rappler.com

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