Sixth Saturday of anger. They were still numerous on this first day of the weekend to meet all over France to pound the pavement of resentment against the health pass, the vaccine; more generally with regard to power. In total, there were some 220 events across the country. But if the mobilization remains important in the depths of the summer, it also recorded a significant drop: 175,503 demonstrators against 214,845 last week according to the Interior, despite some slight increases in Montpellier, or Paris. In total, around twenty people were arrested and one CRS was injured.
No less than four different processions competed in the streets of the capital, where 14,700 people marched.
In any case, several thousand have left Place Denfert-Rochereau (Paris XIVth) at the start of the afternoon: families, retirees, covered by a gray-white sky and swarms of rumbling signs.
A sixty-year-old man, a fake syringe stuck in his head, carries a placard all in rowdy irony on which is written: "Welcome to Kontrolistan."
Glory to Macronescu our guide.
The others ask for "freedom", denounce a "conspiracy" of the government, recall that the demonstrators do not want to be the "guinea pigs" of a vaccine in which they do not believe.
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Health pass: more than 200 events throughout France, support for Didier Raoult
"It is not the problem of the vaccine, but that of freedom", continues Michel, 68, from Yvelines.
"It will explode, people are too angry", assures this retiree, deploring "the lack of debate" on the establishment of the health pass.
Away, Thomas and Vincent, 22, are watching.
Back from vacation, they came "in support", deplore "these liberticidal measures", believing that it would be enough to "empower people" to avoid spreading the virus.
They also imagine the movement to amplify, "mechanically", with the re-entry which points.
"Hands off Raoult"
The procession advances, following a van whose speakers scream classics of French song (“Resist”, by France Gall, in flagship song) or slogans asking for Macron's departure. Boos fed, too, as the crowd brushes the terraces, not very crowded, which adjoin the course. We will also pass a few dozen meters from Boulevard Pasteur - today it was 136 years of the rabies vaccine which the French invented.
At the end of the course, a stage is set up in front of the Invalides.
The former number 2 of the FN, Florian Philippot, co-organizer of the march, deploys a large banner "Do not touch Raoult" in support of the controversial epidemiologist from Marseille, who has become an icon of protesters in the health crisis.
The Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Marseille has decided that he will not be reappointed at the head of the University Hospital Institute (IHU) for infectious diseases which he directs.
In Paris, the former FN Florian Philippot, co-organizer of the march, showed his support for the epidemiologist Didier Raoult, who would not be renewed at the head of the University Hospital Institute (IHU).
LP / Philippe de Poulpiquet
In Marseille, demonstrators went there to protest, when, in Paris, Philippot considered that he was "ousted because he is telling the truth".
The 69-year-old has in fact reached the age limit to be able to work as an academic.
"We are not capitulating to the petty tyrants who want to reduce our lives to flashes of QR codes," then resumed Philippot, leader of the Les Patriotes party and claimed presidential candidate, directly implicating Emmanuel Macron and his government.
The sovereignist, now without a mandate, hopes for a resumption of mobilization in September - "It will be titanic, enormous", he thus prophesied.
Read alsoDidier Raoult: five minutes to understand the sidelining of the director of the IHU in Marseille
On the Elysee side, we refuse to comment on the demonstrations, preferring to recall that "the French are vaccinated, and it works" (given the number of serious cases identified). And to recall that 47 million have already received at least one dose, with the objective of reaching 50 million by the start of the school year, in order to prevent a restart of the epidemic and the implementation of restrictions, like this is currently the case in Martinique and Reunion.