This is yet another isolated act that risks causing conversation. While more than 30,000 people gathered this Tuesday in Rennes for the January 31 strike, a handful of demonstrators tagged a war memorial located not far from the route of the demonstration organized against the pension reform. With spray paint, masked individuals wrote messages on the monument of deportation and resistance. Located rue du Capitaine Maignan, in the Colombier district, the mausoleum houses the ashes of the unknown deportees of the Second World War.
On the place of memory, one could read this: “Died in the war. Class War”. “A particularly shocking act”, according to the prefect Emmanuel Berthier, who “strongly condemns the degradations committed on the sidelines of the institutional course”. It is in this square of the Martyrs that every May 8, the city commemorates the anniversary of the victory of the Allies and the end of the Second World War. “The damage committed by groups of thugs is particularly unbearable,” said PS mayor Nathalie Appéré.
The war memorial was not on the official route of the demonstration that the unions had filed. The inter-union had modified the route to cope with the large expected crowds. Only a few dozen people deviated from the declared route to venture into the alleys behind the Colombier. Clashes broke out in particular on Boulevard Magenta, where a barricade was erected and Christmas trees were burned. The police arrested a person and used tear gas to disperse the most radical individuals. The water cannon was also used.
Mobilization on the rise
The unions have announced a strong mobilization in Rennes for this strike of January 31 with 35,000 people in the streets. The police speak of 26,000 demonstrators. A clear increase in mobilization compared to January 19 when 17,000 to 25,000 people were counted in the streets of the Breton capital. Part of the procession had already distinguished itself by setting fire to a Tesla car and ransacking several shop windows.