Sharjah24 – AFP: Police in Paris fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators on Wednesday, as 19,000 people protested throughout France over new coronavirus restrictions.
Some of the protests began in the morning in Paris as the annual military parade for the traditional Bastille Day parade, watched by President Emmanuel Macron, was taking place along the famous Champs-Elysees.
The demonstrators are unhappy at the decision announced on Monday to oblige health workers to get vaccinated and bring in a vaccine health pass for most public places.
Unvaccinated people would require, for example, a negative test result to enter restaurants.
Since the announcement a record number of French people booked appointments for Covid-19 jabs.
"This is in the name of freedom" was the message from some of the protesters.
In one area of the French capital police fired teargas to disperse the crowd.
The declared protest route was not respected, the prefecture of police said in a tweet, deploring the "throwing of projectiles" and lighting of fires by the demonstrators.
Throughout Paris some 2,250 people protested, while other demonstrations took place in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpelier, Nantes and elsewhere. The French authorities put the total number of protesters at 19,000.
The interior ministry said that there were altogether 53 different protests throughout France.
"Down with dictatorship", "down with the health pass" protesters chanted.
One of them, Yann Fontaine, a 29-year-old notary's clerk from the Berry region in central France, said he had come to demonstrate in Paris arguing that the imposition of a health pass equalled "segregation".
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