Several demonstrations against the vaccine pass project took place on Saturday across France, mainly in calm, a few days after Emmanuel Macron’s controversial statements on the unvaccinated, whom he wants to “piss off”.
Paris has seen several demonstrations, the most important of which brought together a few thousand people at the call of the Patriots of the pro-Frexit presidential candidate Florian Philippot, according to an AFP journalist. They marched, in the rain, from the Place du Palais Royal to Place Vauban behind the Invalides.
The former right-hand man of Marine Le Pen denounced “the country of tyranny, of segregation, where millions of people are set apart”.
In the crowd, a 57-year-old librarian, declaring herself close to the ideas of La France Insoumise and environmentalists, said she was “disturbed” by the person of Mr. Philippot. But she wanted to protest against “the pass which becomes a disguised vaccination obligation”.
A police source called the gathering “tense”. Just like the one held on Boulevard de l’Hôpital (in the south-east of Paris), on the initiative of yellow vests, with “the inclinations of certain radical members to move the demonstration, but this was quickly contained”, according to this source.
The vaccine pass bill, adopted by deputies on Thursday, is due to pass before the Senate next week.
In Lyon, a small crowd of demonstrators of all ages and little masked gathered in a good-natured atmosphere on Place Bellecour, in the city center. Among them some “yellow vests”, tricolor flags and a red from the CGT. Slogans denouncing “social apartheid” and boos against President Emmanuel Macron and his Prime Minister punctuated the demonstration.
In Bordeaux, between 500 and 1,000 people, according to the police, and 9,000 according to the organizers, demonstrated despite the rain under the cries of “Macron on you bored”. “When will we see a respect vaccine?” , #ontemmerde “,” Confidence broken “, could we read on the signs.
Emmanuel Macron created an uproar on Tuesday by declaring to have “very want to piss off” the unvaccinated, by “limiting for them, as much as possible, access to activities of social life”. Words that he said to assume “totally” on Friday.
A Bordeaux protester, unvaccinated against Covid-19 “but not anti-vaccine”, said marching “for the first time in her life” because the words of the President of the Republic “broke the camel’s back”.
At her side, another demonstrator, who wishes to remain anonymous, says she is “outraged, as a mother of two children” by “the lack of respect” of the president.
In the East, 1,250 demonstrators marched in Colmar and 1,900 in Mulhouse, according to the Haut-Rhin prefecture. They were 1,500 in Strasbourg, according to the Bas-Rhin prefecture.
The authorities had counted 121,000 demonstrators against the vaccination and the health pass throughout the country on September 11, and some 237,000 participants on August 7.