PARIS (Dispatches) - Demonstrators took to the streets of France on Saturday under the watch of 70,000 police officers, with unrest appearing markedly less severe than a week earlier despite scattered confrontations in several cities.
Tens of thousands of people marched peacefully through the French capital, according to police numbers, denouncing the high cost of living and accusing President Emmanuel Macron of cutting public services while failing to tackle rising inequality.
“Down with the state, the police and the fascists,” some of the flag-waving crowds chanted.
Elsewhere, police fired tear gas at people in Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lille and Nice, where a water cannon was deployed after protesters refused orders to pull back.
In France’s second and third cities, Marseille and Lyon, clashes broke out between hooded youths and police.
The government deployed 10,000 more police and gendarmes than on October 17, when nationwide protests descended into some of the worst unrest in France in years.
“We have to be ultra, ultra responsive,” said Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, who has accused far-left groups and criminal gangs of fomenting violence.
Nunez told reporters that police had arrested 135 people nationwide by early afternoon, many following pre-emptive searches that he said had uncovered fireworks, ball bearings and other data-x-items that could be used as weapons.
Much of central Paris took on the appearance of a city under lockdown, with shopkeepers boarding up storefronts, museums closing their doors and more than 20 metro stations shut.
Business groups urged retailers to remain closed after thousands of shops and businesses were damaged or looted across France last weekend.
Several of the capital’s best-known cultural institutions, including the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay and the Paris Opera, closed for the day as a precaution, leaving tourists frustrated.
The route for Paris’ main demonstration was settled only after a legal battle triggered by a last-minute police order moving organizers away from the city center towards the southeastern fringes of the capital.
Police said the original route passed through areas with a high concentration of businesses similar to those targeted last weekend. Leftist politicians said the late change was aimed at causing confusion and keeping people away.
Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who joined the Paris rally, hailed what he called a “magnificent mass display of collective discipline and self-restraint”.
He said the protests would continue unless Macron addressed the social malaise in France, one of the world’s richest nations but with a growing debt that has alarmed investors.
France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, earlier said that there was a turnout of about 35,000 people in marches across the country, compared with 60,000 last Saturday. He said authorities had counted 136 public street actions, down from 264 the previous weekend.
Meanwhile in Albania, more than 2000 police deployed around Tirana on the 12th day of student-led protests amid reports of concerted efforts to stop demonstrators entering the capital.