Some of the self-proclaimed “convoys of freedom“, who had done Saturday stopover around Paris, left Sunday morning in the direction of Brussels, but the police remained mobilized to prevent them from blocking the capital. A large part of the demonstrators decided to return home. A police source indicates that 10% of the demonstrators in Paris continued towards the Belgian capital.
The watchword of the organizers of the anti-pass convoys was to take the road around 10 a.m. to reach Brussels where a large rally is planned for Monday. But, according to a police source, not all participants should follow this order. The Belgian police warned participants and citizens. The Belgian police are carefully monitoring the formation of such a “freedom convoy” once morest health measures, while the demonstration has been banned from access to the capital.
Stopover in Lille
A few hundred participants in the anti-pass convoys formed in France arrived on Sunday followingnoon near Lille for a stopover, before a rally scheduled for Monday in Brussels, following their passage through the French capital on Saturday, noted an AFP journalist. .
By late followingnoon, some 200 vehicles, cars and vans, including several adorned with French flags, had arrived at the meeting place, 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 loose nothing” shouted those who had already arrived, for some dressed in yellow vests. “We will go to Brussels to try to block, to fight once morest this policy of permanent control“, told AFP Jean-Pierre Schmit, a 58-year-old unemployed man from Toulouse who demonstrated in Paris on Saturday.
Protesters say they are surprised by police violence
The decision has not yet been made whether to leave in the evening or on Monday morning, while on the Telegram messaging system loops used by the participants, advice is given to cross the border in dispersed order.
The Belgian authorities announced on Thursday to prohibit access to Brussels for these convoys, while no authorization was requested for a demonstration in the Belgian capital.
Mr. Schmit asserts himself “impressed by the violence used by law enforcement“Saturday in Paris once morest the demonstrators who arrived in the center of the capital.”But I’ve been a ‘yellow vest’ for three years, I’m starting to get used to it“.
A few police officers were visible around the parking lot, but “nothing forbids“to the demonstrators to continue to the border with Belgium, noted a police source.
Holding up a poster, “I love freedom“, Sandrine, a 45-year-old production manager who does not want to give her name, did she come from Lyon because “we are gradually losing our freedoms, in a very insidious and sneaky way“, what the health crisis has according to her”really revealed“. But she did not demonstrate in Paris, “we respected the ban because we don’t want to be confronted with violence“.
Early Sunday morning, there were a hundred motorhomes in the Bois de Boulogne, 220 vehicles in Seine-et-Marne and 120 in Val-d’Oise, according to a police source.
A busy Saturday
At the beginning of the followingnoon on Saturday, 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 from Saturday to Sunday in the Champs-Élysées district and in the Bois de Boulogne, forcing, according to the PP, the police to intervene to “verbalize and disperse “the last participants in this demonstration banned by the prefect of police, Didier Lallement.
The police proceeded on Saturday in Paris to 97 arrests and 513 verbalizations of opponents of health measures participating in anti-step convoys, according to an overall report communicated on Sunday by the PP.
According to the prosecution, at 6:00 a.m., 81 people were in police custody, including Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the faces of the “yellow vests” movement, and active support of the anti-pass convoys. Arrested near the Elysée, he was placed in police custody for “organization of a prohibited demonstration and participation in a group formed with a view to committing violence”, according to this source. In addition, the Paris police prefect on Sunday requested an internal administrative investigation following the broadcast on social networks of a video showing a police officer pointing his weapon at a motorist on Saturday, Place de l’Etoile in Pais.
“A video is currently circulating on social networks following a police intervention on the Champs-Elysées. The prefect is launching an internal administrative investigation,” tweeted the police headquarters. This video, also broadcast in the 8:00 p.m. newspaper on TF1, shows a policeman getting out of his screen-printed car, gun in hand. He was chasing a white car whose occupants displayed tricolor flags and claimed to be anti-pass convoys. The video shows the policeman pointing his gun at the driver.
A heterogeneous gathering of opponents of President Emmanuel Macron, the vaccination pass and “yellow vests“, those who call themselves “freedom convoys” were formed on the model of the mobilization which is currently paralyzing the Canadian capital Ottawa.