Part of the anti-pass convoys from all over France arrived this Sunday near Lille, for a stopover, before a rally scheduled for Monday in Brussels, following stopping on Saturday around Paris and demonstrating in the capital for some of them. them. At the end of the followingnoon, some 300 vehicles, cars and vans, many adorned with French flags, were at the rendezvous, a shopping center car park in Fâches-Thumesnil, 10 km from the center of Lille. Others continued to arrive, in a concert of car horns.
“We don’t give up”, “Freedom freedom” shouted the participants, for some dressed in yellow vests, welcomed by local supporters. “We will go to Brussels to try to block, to fight once morest this policy of permanent control”, affirms Jean-Pierre Schmit, a 58-year-old unemployed man from Toulouse, who demonstrated on Saturday in Paris.
But the decision has not yet been made whether to leave in the evening or on Monday morning, while on the loops of the Telegram messaging system used by the participants, advice is given to cross the border in dispersed order. The Belgian authorities have banned all demonstrations in the capital “with motorized vehicles” and announced that they have taken measures “to prevent the blocking of the Brussels-Capital region”.
” I love freedom “
According to a police source, some 850 vehicles in total – vans, camper vans and cars – left the outskirts of Paris in the early followingnoon to reach Brussels, via the A1 or secondary roads, and groups had also already reached Saint-Quentin (Aisne) and Arras (Pas-de-Calais). Those who call themselves “freedom convoys”, on the model of the mobilization which is currently paralyzing the Canadian capital Ottawa, bring together opponents of the vaccine pass but also of President Emmanuel Macron and also take up the claims of the Yellow Vests on the cost of the life.
Brandishing a poster, “I love freedom”, Sandrine, a 45-year-old production manager who does not want to give her name, came to Lille from Lyon because, she says, “we are gradually losing our freedoms, in a very insidious way”. A few police officers were visible around the parking lot, but “nothing prevents” the demonstrators from continuing to the border with Belgium, noted a police source.
Coming from all over France, convoys had converged at the end of the week towards Paris. But, if the police had counted 3,000 vehicles for 5,000 demonstrators around Paris on Friday evening, all the convoys did not ultimately reach the capital and not all intended to reach Brussels.
Internal investigation
In a tweet, the Paris police headquarters said this Sunday to maintain “its vigilance to prevent blockages at the gates of Paris with reinforced checks throughout the day”. Some 7,500 members of the police have been mobilized in the capital since Friday and until Monday.
Early Saturday followingnoon, more than a hundred vehicles had managed to reach the Champs-Élysées which were gradually evacuated by the police with tear gas. A handful of diehards, however, remained until late at night in the Champs-Élysées district and in the Bois de Boulogne, forcing, according to the police headquarters, the police to intervene to “verbalize and disperse” the last participants. to this prohibited event.
The police carried out 97 arrests and 513 verbalizations of participants in the convoys in Paris on Saturday, according to an overall report communicated on Sunday by the prefecture. And according to the prosecution, at 6 a.m., 81 people were in police custody, including Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the figures of the Yellow Vests and active support of the anti-pass convoys.
Arrested near the Elysée, he was placed in police custody for “organizing a prohibited demonstration and participating in a group formed to commit violence”, according to this source. Jérôme Rodrigues “wishes to indicate that he is in no way the organizer of this demonstration” and considers that he is a “political prisoner”, his lawyer David Libeskind said in a press release this Sunday.
The prefect of police also asked Sunday for an internal administrative investigation following the broadcast on social networks of a video showing a policeman pointing his weapon at a motorist on Saturday, place de l’Etoile in Paris.
