Tens of thousands marched as protests and strikes against unpopular pension reforms gripped France again Tuesday, with police ramping up security after the government warned that radical demonstrators intended “to destroy, to injure and to kill.”
According to the AP, Concerns that violence could mar the demonstrations prompted what Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described as an unprecedented deployment of 13,000 officers, nearly half of them concentrated in the French capital, where police faced down ultra-leftist radicals.
In a sign that protests may be losing a little steam, sanitation workers in Paris announced that they are suspending their more than the three-week-long strike that has left piles of stinking garbage uncollected on the capital’s streets.
The CGT union, which organized the strikes, said in a statement that workers will return to their jobs Wednesday because “we hardly have any strikers left.” It was unclear whether private companies responsible for keeping some Paris districts clean will return to work.
The CGT reported a dive in the number of Paris demonstrators on Tuesday after a record high of 800,000 five days earlier. Official figures, always far lower, weren’t immediately available.
After months of upheaval, an exit from the firestorm of protest triggered by President Emmanuel Macron ’s changes to France’s retirement system looked as far away as ever. Despite fresh union pleas that the government pause its hotly contested push to raise France’s legal retirement age from 62 to 64, Macron seemingly remained wedded to it.
The French leader previously used a special constitutional power to ram the reform past legislators without allowing them a vote. His move this month further galvanized the protest movement. Violence has since flared and thousands of tons of reeking trash piled up on Paris’ streets during the sanitation workers strike.
The Eiffel Tower’s website announced that strikers had closed down the world-famous tourist attraction. The Louvre Museum was similarly strike-bound Monday. “Everybody is getting madder,” said Clément Saild, a train passenger at Paris’ Gare de Lyon railway station, where tracks were temporarily invaded and blocked Tuesday by protesting workers.
He said he supports the strikes despite their impact on transportation and other services. “I am 26, and I wonder if I will ever retire,” he said. Another passenger, Helene Cogan, 70, said: “French people are stubborn and things are getting out of hand.”
