From Paris to Marseille and from Lille to Bordeaux, out of 217 rallies, 214,845 opponents of all stripes of the health pass demonstrated for the fifth Saturday in a row “for the freedom to choose”, after the system was generalized in most places public, according to the Interior Ministry.
In total, the police carried out 11 arrests.
An officer was slightly injured.
In the capital, the two main processions pounded the pavement behind a wide range of slogans such as “liberate France”, “stop coronafolie” or “take back your Macron pass and get out”.
According to the Interior Ministry, 13,900 participants were present on three registered processions.
Two separate processions were also formed in Lyon, where one marched to cries of "Down with the big pharma" between the district of Confluence and Place Bellecour, prohibited for demonstrators by prefectural decree, and the other, authorized. , walked on the left bank of the Rhône.
A mobilization that persists
Started in the heart of summer, this heterogeneous anti-government mobilization continues to mobilize.
At least 47,700 protesters, police said, marched in the Southeast on Saturday without incident.
They were 22,000 in Toulon (19,000 last week) and 6,000 in Nice (10,000 on August 7).
Some 7,500 people marched in Montpellier, 6,000 in Marseille, 3,000 in Lyon and 2,650 in Lille, an attendance comparable to that of the previous weekend, and another 4,200 in Bordeaux, against 3,300 last week, according to the prefectures.
Across the country, they were just over 237,000 last week, according to the Interior Ministry, more than double the size of the movement's beginnings in mid-July.
Apolitical demonstrators, caregivers or firefighters
Protesters accuse the government of underestimating the anti-health pass protest.
The militant collective Le Nombre Jaune recorded more than 415,000 “minimum” participants last Saturday.
Without major incident so far, the protest attracts families and apolitical first-time demonstrators as well as caregivers or firefighters in uniform and goes beyond the sole anti-vaccine or conspiracy movement.
Since Monday, the health pass has been imposed in most public places.
Bars, restaurants, cinemas, long-distance transport, museums or hospitals require this QR code which testifies to a complete vaccination against Covid-19, a negative test or a recovery from the disease.
