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Violence erupts in French student protests
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-17 11:48
French police used teargas and water cannon when violence erupted as students
turned up the heat on Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin over a jobs law on
Thursday, while his government struggled to defuse the crisis.
French riot police
take position outside Paris City Hall as students in France continue to
protest against the government's First Employment Contract (CPE) on the
eve of nation-wide marches March 15, 2006.
[Reuters] |
Stone-throwing protesters clashed
with police at the end of a march by several thousand university and high school
students in Paris and later outside the Sorbonne university.
A kiosk and a car were set ablaze and several windows in shops and cafes were
smashed during the violence, which went on late into the evening with scattered
groups clashing with police in the Latin Quarter. Police said 181 people were
arrested.
Protests across France have gathered in momentum since hundreds of thousands
of protesters turned out on March 7 against the law, which critics say reduces
job protection for young people. The protests have been largely peaceful so far.
Student leaders said 300,000 to 600,000 marched across France and that 64 of
the country's 84 universities were hit by the protests. Officials reported
247,500 protesters nationwide.
"CRS = SS!" chanted protesters at the Sorbonne, comparing the riot police to
the leading Nazi troops. At least eight riot police were injured in the unrest
and several dozen youths, many of them hooded or masked, were hauled away by
police.
The protests could hurt the conservative Villepin's hopes of running for
president in 2007. He says the law will help reduce unemployment among the
young, now running at 22.8 percent, more than twice the overall national rate.
Opinion polls show Villepin's popularity has tumbled during the biggest test
of his 10 months in office.
Street protests can make or break governments in France. Protests in 1995
badly undermined the then conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppe, who lost snap
elections two years later.
MORE PROTESTS PLANNED
Trade unions plan another action day on Saturday and hope to top the one
million protesters they estimated took part in the March 7 protests. Police
estimates were half that figure.
Police fired teargas after 100 students briefly occupied a town hall in the
western city of Rennes on Thursday. Thousands of students marched in the
Mediterranean port city of Marseille and in Bordeaux in the southwest.
In Paris, police in riot gear fired teargas at several dozen youths pelting
them with stones after the main march ended at a square only a few blocks from
Villepin's Matignon Palace office.
Nearby boutiques and the elite Sciences Po university closed as a precaution
as the protests signaled hardening opposition to the law, which allows employers
to dismiss workers under 26 during a two-year trial period without having to
give a reason.
"Chirac, Villepin, Sarkozy, your trial period is up!" read one banner in
Paris, referring to President Jacques Chirac, his prime minister and Interior
Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Student and union leaders have spurned an offer of talks over the law from
Villepin, who railroaded the measure through parliament. They say he must back
down.
"I am open to dialogue within the framework of the law and to improve the
First Job Contract," said Villepin. But he has vowed to stand firm over the law
because he believes in it.
With no end in sight to the standoff, ministers have offered six-monthly
reviews of the law in an effort to defuse tensions.
"Perhaps it isn't the best solution, perhaps we could improve it, but at
least we're moving forwards," Finance Minister Thierry Breton said on RMC radio.
France's unemployment rate is one of the highest in Europe at 9.6 percent and
more than twice that for under 25-year-olds. It tops 40 percent in some run-down
neighborhoods.
Surburban riots last year were widely blamed on high youth unemployment in
poor areas.
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