160 held after Paris rioting

[Felix the Cat]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0319/france.html

More than 160 people have been arrested in Paris after outbreaks of violence at the end of a day of protests.

Half a million people took to the streets across France yesterday in mostly peaceful marches to protest against a new law they fear will erode job security.

However, there was scattered violence in some towns and police in Paris used tear gas and water cannon to disperse rioters.

24 people, including seven police officers, were injured in the violence.

[Felix the Cat]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18503643%255E2703,00.html

RIOTERS paralysed the Left Bank of central Paris last night, hurling petrol bombs and stones at police and burning cars as a mass student protest turned into the most violent clashes since the demonstrations against new labour laws began last week.

The student upheavals of May 1968 were once again recalled when riot police responded with rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas in the affluent quarter best known to tourists.

At least 30,000 Paris high school and university students - 120,000 according to organisers - chanting slogans such as "Villepin, you're toast" and "Contract for slavery" marched peacefully through the centre of the capital yesterday afternoon.

But the demonstration became suddenly violent when young protesters - many of whom police said were not involved in the formal protest against the new labour laws - fought a pitched battle with riot police near Sevres-Babylone.

For almost two hours, the square in front of the exclusive department store Le Bon Marche was transformed into a war zone as the CRS riot police armed with shields and batons fought off young protesters throwing Molotov cocktails, petrol bombs, stones, chairs and tables snatched from cafes.

The rioters set fire to a news kiosk, smashed windows, torched a bookstore and burned cars near the Sorbonne university. The battle moved to the Place de la Sorbonne before police made more than 180 arrests among a national total of 300.

Far-right protesters yelling "Leftists, free our universities" attacked peaceful demonstrators with batons, according to police, again reviving memories of the 1968 student protests when the extreme Right and far Left clashed in the Latin Quarter. Forty-six gendarmes and riot police were injured in yesterday's troubles.

But Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, surveying the damage after the protests, reaffirmed the "constitutional right" of French people to demonstrate.

Mr Sarkozy said there was a difference between "casseurs (rioters) and young people".

The unrest was not limited to the capital. During the national day of action by high school and university students against the first-employment contract, at least 250,000 students demonstrated from Toulouse and Marseilles to Bordeaux and Lille.

Two-thirds of France's universities are disrupted or closed due to the mass protests against Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's new labour laws, which will make it easier for employers to fire workers aged under 26.

The reform is aimed at reducing France's record high rate of youth unemployment, which stands at almost 23 per cent and more than 40 per cent in the immigrant-dominated suburbs surrounding Paris and France's major regional centres.

Protests in Rennes were especially violent, with the local town hall occupied by violent protesters and demonstrators repulsed by tear gas.

Mr de Villepin hatched his plan to attack youth unemployment after last November's riots that raged for three weeks in the suburbs of Paris and the regions.

The contracts aim to end the cycle of joblessness that afflicts young French people who are shut out of the job market by the the high rate of unemployment and France's rigid labour laws.

A small minority of youth from the suburbs have spoken out in favour of the new labour laws, saying they prefer a job to long-term unemployment. Yet the desired "wedge", or culture war, between the middle-class university students of the cities and the alienated youth of the suburbs has failed to materialise on a large scale.

[Atlas]

It's part of their culture to riot, and protest about everything anyway.

[WFHermans]

Jewish Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, surveying the damage after the protests, reaffirmed the "constitutional right" of French people to demonstrate.