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(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
AT LEAST 150,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Paris to protest a new law allowing same-sex marriage, a largely peaceful gathering that later turned violent as riot police battled hundreds of right-wingers.
Police said they had made a total of 293 arrests and that six people were injured in the course of Sunday’s demonstration: four police officers, an AFP photographer and a protester.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls, in a statement, blamed the “extreme right” for the violence.
“These incidents were provoked by several hundred individuals, most from the extreme right and the (nationalist) Identity Bloc, who violently attacked police,” he added.
Riot police clash with protesters. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
The main demonstration on Sunday saw three separate processions converging on the Invalides esplanade, filling the huge promenade with pink and blue — the colours adopted by the anti-gay marriage movement.
Police said 150,000 people turned out to protest, a figure immediately contested by organisers who said one million opponents of the law had shown up.
Protesters lift flairs during the demonstration (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Some of the far-right activists briefly unfurled a banner at the ruling Socialist party’s headquarters urging President Francois Hollande to resign.
As the protestors dispersed, after a largely peaceful march, police said up to 500 people began attacking them by throwing metal barriers, smoke flares and beer bottles.
A sign reading ‘Father and Mother, There’s no better for a child’ at the demonstration. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)
The youths shouted slogans against the government such as “Socialist dictatorship” and also threw objects at journalists covering the event.
Late Saturday, police had detained 50 people involved in an anti-gay marriage protest on the busy Champs-Elysees avenue.
(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Fears of unrest at Sunday’s protest had been fuelled by violence that erupted earlier this month during celebrations marking football club Paris Saint-Germain’s league victory, which saw tourists attacked and shop and car windows smashed.
Some 4,500 security forces were mobilised for Sunday’s demonstration that was billed as a last-ditch show of force by opponents of the bill allowing same-sex marriage and adoption, which was voted into law on May 18 following months of bitter protests.
But those in the protest ignored the recent tensions, bringing their children along as others had in previous demonstrations.
(AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
“We keep hearing about a far-right movement, I can see only families here,” said one man called Raoul, who came from the city of Dijon.
Onlookers were instead treated to creative forms of protest. One man dressed in black held a scythe and wore a mask of Hollande as he stood behind a coffin containing a mannequin dressed as Marianne, the emblem of France.
“Hollande, your mother isn’t called Robert”, shouted some of the demonstrators in a slogan that gained in popularity as the afternoon progressed.
(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Supporters and opponents of the bill began protesting last autumn when it was adopted by the cabinet, and continued to do so at regular intervals throughout the country during the legislative process.
The definitive vote in the French parliament came on April 23 when the law was passed legalising both homosexual marriages and adoptions by gay couples.
One of Hollande’s campaign pledges, it has proved hugely divisive in a country that is officially secular but predominantly Catholic.
(AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
France is the 14th country to legalise same-sex marriage, an issue that has also divided opinion in many other nations.
In Brazil, tens of thousands of evangelical Christians marched in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday protesting a recent legal ruling allowing gay marriage.
And in Poland, some 10,000 protesters marched Sunday in solidarity with opponents of the French law, to defend the traditional family structure.
Anti same-sex marriage protesters face riot police while teargas cannisters smoke. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
But according to a survey published Sunday in the Journal du Dimanche, nearly three-quarters of French people are tired of the anti-bill protests and think they should stop.
Another potential flashpoint will be in the southern town of Montpellier on Wednesday when the country’s first gay wedding is due to take place.
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I wonder if Elon can bankrupt Twitter as fast as Truss tanked the UK economy…
@Rui Firmino: He’s giving it a good shot to be fair…he’s completely out of his depth.
@Rui Firmino: I think you got it backwards. When it took it over it was losing millions a day, $4 million a day at the moment. He is trying to reverse that.
@Celtic Eagle: *When he took it over..
@Celtic Eagle: bet it’s losing more than €4m a day now ….
@MrHammey12: who knows, but if a business genius takes over a failing company then it’s strange to say ‘he will bankrupt the company’. I’ve a funny feeling they are political comments by woke liberals.
@Celtic Eagle: He’s not gonna ride ya
@OnlyHereForTheComments: It’s almost embarassing to see these Elon fanboys.
@Rui Firmino: I’m not a fanboy. I’m just stating facts. It seems to me your very emotional on the subject
@Celtic Eagle: Don’t be daft. The only thing I feel seeing this mess is contempt.
@Celtic Eagle: maybe if you say “woke liberals” a few more times Elon will invite you over to his gaff for a few drinks?
@Celtic Eagle:
@Celtic Eagle: Twitter made $1.3 billon profit in the last 4 years, in 2018-2021. It’s profits were knocked in 2020 and 2021 by a drop in advertising due to the pandemic.
Last year Twitter reduced its losses to $221 millon (on $5 billon revenue) was likely, contrary to what Elon claimed, set to become profitable this year. He’s messed that up.
Year Net Profit ($)
2018 1206
2019 1466
2020 -1136
2021 -221
And who knows where invites to gaffs and drinks can potentially lead!
@Mel Fitzpatrick: yep, his blue checkmark changes enabled 1 troll for 8 dollars to wipe 4.37% value off of the stock price of a 336 billion dollar pharma company with 1 tweet. Over 14.5 billion just went poof!
So thrashing it out with randomers on Twitter is the how Twitter is developing it’s HR policies now .If it wasn’t so serious for Twitter staff it would be funny .
Wow just as the UK government starts to make sensible sounding noises and threatens to end the ongoing comedy soap Elon comes to the rescue and brings us hilarious antics as he trys to make twitter pay off. Instead of millions of people getting messed about it’s only a few thousand most of whom are probably already planning moves and toughing it out for redundancy pay.
He told the Tesla managers that if they didn’t want to come to the office for at least 40 hours per week they could pretend to work at home for someone else.
have your say