CGT demonstrators during the May Day parade in Paris. – Bertrand GUAY / AFP
“Twenty-one injured, including four serious”. This is the assessment that the CGT attacks of which she was the target, Saturday in Paris, on the sidelines of the May 1 rally. When the procession arrived at Place de la Nation, around 6 p.m., a group of individuals, some wearing yellow vests, the union said in a statement, directly attacked trucks and CGT activists.
“There were serious errors in the management of this event”
“Homophobic, sexist, racist insults preceded acts of vandalization of vehicles and organizations, and, much more serious, hatred was expressed by a series of blows and throwing projectiles,” the statement said.
“There were serious errors in the management of this event,” said Philippe Martinez, Secretary General second French union, Saturday evening, at the microphone of
LCI. It is scandalous that our trucks and our activists have been graveled. The problem, first of all, is the securing of the demonstration since the trucks were prevented from clearing the Place de la Nation “, continued the union leader, believing that the instructions given to the police had to be” revised ””.
A Parisian parade marked by tensions
The violence was not only limited to the Place de la Nation on Saturday in Paris. An hour after the departure from Place de la République, the first tensions erupted on the sidelines of the procession bringing together several thousand people at the call of the CGT, FO and Solidaires. The police in particular had to intervene on several occasions to try to prevent the constitution of a “black bloc” in front of the union procession, according to a police source. The window of a branch of Société Générale, located on Boulevard Voltaire, in the 11th arrondissement of the capital, has been degraded. The windows of a nearby bus shelter were also destroyed. Projectiles were thrown in the direction of the police, who responded with tear gas or with de-encircling grenades.
At 5 p.m., 34 people had been arrested in Paris, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, expressing on his Twitter account his support for “wounded security forces”.
“I find it scandalous that these thugs, the black blocs, wanted to steal this moment from the trade unions”, declared Elisabeth Borne, Minister of Labor, on Europe 1, which condemns “very firmly” the disturbances which have marked certain parades of May 1st.