Sharjah24 – AFP: More than 200,000 protesters marched across France on Saturday against a health pass championed by President Emmanuel Macron to defeat Covid-19, even though the measure has already been applied.
The interior ministry said a total of 214,845 people, including nearly 14,000 in Paris, took part in the nationwide protests, down by about 22,000 from last weekend, but still strong for the fifth straight weekend.
Macron sees the health pass -- which makes vaccination essential to carry on with routine activities like sipping a coffee in a cafe or travelling on a train -- as the key to emerging from the pandemic and avoiding further lockdowns.
But protesters -- an eclectic mix of far-right, yellow vest anti-inequality activists, anti-vaxxers and civil liberties campaigners -- say that the policy encroaches on the basic freedoms so prized by the French.
Two separate protests were taking place in Paris -- in a sign of the inability of the protesters to fully unite -- with slogans like "free France!", "stop the corona-madness" or "yes to the freedom to choose" being chanted and brandished.
Yann Fontaine, 30, who works in a notary office, said he believed the health pass is a measure that "kills freedom and is segregationist".
Unlike in the yellow vests demonstrations from 2018 there have been no reports of major incidents in these protests. But the numbers of protesters remain strong and show no sign of diminishing.
About 237,000 people turned out last Saturday across France, including 17,000 in Paris, the interior ministry said, exceeding the 204,000 recorded the weekend before and numbers extremely unusual for protests at the height of the summer break.
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