It’s a new weekend of events that is in full swing. Rallies “for freedom” and “against the health dictatorship” took place this Saturday in more than 150 cities in France. In the middle of summer, the processions have continued to gain in importance since the introduction, on July 21, of the pass (total vaccination, negative Covid-19 test or certificate of recovery) in certain places of leisure and culture. Today, across the country, nearly 237,000 people demonstrated against the introduction of the health pass from Monday, August 9, 2021.
With the final validation of the extension of the latter by the Constitutional Council on Thursday, the mobilization was even greater than last Saturday. Already on July 31, demonstrations across the country had gathered more than 204,000 people, against 161,000 a week earlier, according to the Interior Ministry.
Protest at risk in Paris
These demonstrations take place when 55% of French people say they are willing to present a health pass to go to cafes and restaurants and 63% to board a train or a plane, according to an Elabe survey for Les Echos, Radio Classique and the Institut Montaigne published on August 4. 20% of those polled also say “support” the protest movement, 17% feel “sympathy” towards it.
The authorities argue that the number of hospitalizations in critical care continues to increase and that daily deaths linked to Covid-19 in hospitals are on the rise again. The situation is deteriorating in particular in the West Indies, and in particular in Guadeloupe, confined since Wednesday.
“Macron, your pass, we don’t want it”, “Macron, shut up, we don’t want it anymore”: slogans hostile to the president resounded in a Parisian procession – of several thousand people, including many “yellow vests” – very supervised by the mobile gendarmes.
Demonstrations all over France
As last week, the crowd was stronger in the Southeast, where at least 47,000 people, according to the police, marched. They were 19,000 in Toulon, nearly 10,000 in Nice, 8,000 in Montpellier, at least 6,000 in Marseille, according to initial figures from the police and prefectures.
In the Brittany region, the authorities counted 14,745 demonstrators, or 3,000 more than last Saturday.
The gatherings were planned in more than 150 cities the day after a new urgent appeal launched by Emmanuel Macron to the French – “Get vaccinated” – while nearly 66% of the population received at least one dose of the vaccine.
About 3,500 people according to the police, 5,000 according to the organizers, demonstrated on the island of Reunion, under partial confinement and strict curfew since July 31.
The authorities have identified 3,000 demonstrators in Chambéry and Mulhouse, 3,100 in Strasbourg, 3,300 in Bordeaux as in Rennes, 3,500 in Colmar, 3,800 in Metz, 3,900 in Clermont-Ferrand, 5,000 in Toulouse or 5,300 in Nantes.
In Bordeaux, Gaëlle Faure, 23, a nurse at the CHU and not vaccinated, protested above all against the compulsory vaccination of caregivers: “A few months ago at the hospital, I was told that I could come to work if I was positive. and today they explain to me that if I am not vaccinated, I am a danger for the patients, I find that scandalous! “.
More than a hundred people, including many traders, demonstrated in Cambrai, in the north. Shops were closed there to protest against the control of the pass which “will be long, complicated and could create tensions”, in the opinion of Morgan Sedrue, 36, manager of a bar, who is afraid to see his customers ” divided by two “.
The end of the course gave rise to clashes with the police in Lyon – where the police made seven arrests for throwing projectiles – as well as in Dijon when demonstrators blocked a tram track.