Evacuation of "yellow vests": where are we?

"It must stop," asked Christophe Castaner on Thursday. Pointing to the "responsibility" of the "yellow vests" continuing their mobilization despite government announcements and accidents on the margins of the roadblocks, the Minister of the Interior was speaking after the announcement of a ninth death, that of a protester overthrown by a heavyweight near Agen. But also a few days of Christmas Eve, impacted by a movement that lasts since November 17. "There is the will, basically to harm the institutions, to block the system, to block shopping centers, to block the French who want to go shopping," he said. On the ground, the reality is contrasted between evacuations, reorganization and preparation of a "act VI" focused on the borders.

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Protesters dancing against the police. On the side of the dismantling, a first assessment was sketched by the Secretary of State Laurent Nuñez, Wednesday: 170 points of block had been evacuated since December 15 and 4,000 demonstrators were counted on the territory, against 10.000 a week earlier. In the majority of cases, evacuations took place in peace, the "yellow vests" having been instructed to "not resist". In Gironde, three quarters of busy roundabouts had been dismantled or uninstalled Wednesday night. In the West, the prefect of Morbihan had banned by order "gatherings of people, shelter facilities and the deposit of materials" on nine roundabouts of the department, including that of Lanester, occupied since the beginning of the movement. The video of a demonstrator dancing on Edith Piaf's song against the police during the evacuation of a Margencel roundabout in Haute-Savoie went around social networks.

At #Margencel the #Yellowguns who are being dislodged this morning are dancing in front of the police on an air of Edith Piaf #HauteSavoie Video of @ vivionrpic.twitter.com / n27WBmDOiU

Operations continued Thursday, including the exit of the A4 at Phalsbourg, reports the Republican Lorrain , indicating that four people were arrested by law enforcement. Since the beginning of the evacuations, some clashes and minor claims have to be reported especially in Bandol, in the Var, where a toll barrier was burned. If the authorities had not made an official point on the number of blocking points remaining Thursday, four days of New Year's Eve, the state of traffic powered by direct Vinci Autoroutes seemed to indicate a downward trend, with ten concerned, against 40 on Wednesday. The A7 motorway, at the level of the Bollène and South Orange interchanges, is particularly disturbed.

"Relocations" and requests for municipal premises. Faced with these dismantling, the ambitions of "yellow vests" vary. In some blocking points, as in Montceau-les-Mines, Saone-et-Loire, the demonstrators have already returned to the sites dismantled since December 15, or in nearby places. In the neighboring Var, some forty "yellow vests" resettled on Wednesday at the roundabout of the Muy toll after being dislodged three times by the gendarmes. In Scionzier, in Haute-Savoie, the demonstrators met by Europe 1 found the parade: to establish their camps on a private ground, in front of the roundabout, always in sight of the motorists. "The owner let us settle nicely, we are in good standing, the gendarmes can not do anything against us," one of our journalists Marion, a young participant in the movement, told us.

"There is a form of conviviality since the beginning, people have learned to know each other, there are friendships that bind," said Wednesday Priscilla Ludosky, one of the faces of "yellow vests", interviewed by Mediapart. "There are a lot of people talking about staying there until the New Year roundabouts and tolls remain the symbolic places of the movement." In several cities in the west of France, some demonstrators seem ready to abandon these "symbols" and have asked the town halls to ask for municipal premises where to continue to gather to organize "citizen assemblies", according to France 3. Face at this request, the mayor of Redon, Pascal Duchêne, called the "yellow vests" to organize in Ouest-France : "I can not attribute anything without valid reason or legal status that could look like an association. 'go in the direction of law and facilitate dialogue.'

What about "act VI" of the mobilization?

Slowing down this weekend, will mobilization find a new start on Saturday, the most unifying day of the week since its birth in mid-November? In groups of "yellow vests" on social networks, calls for blockages in border areas circulate to federate the movement with other European countries. On the side of the Ile-de-France, the estate and the Palace of Versailles will be closed "preemptively" because of a project of demonstration in the city, said Thursday the prefecture of Yvelines.