Montpellier (AFP)
Several hundred "yellow vests" gathered and marched Saturday in Montpellier in response to a call "national", in a quickly ambience tense marked by several arrests.
Shortly before 5:00 pm, 10 people had been arrested, and a policeman wounded by a helmet hit on his leg, said the prefecture of Herault to AFP.
From the beginning of the demonstration, in the early afternoon, several ropes of CRS surrounded the protesters, including blocking access to the station, the Polygon shopping mall and the prefecture, and sent tear gas, noted an AFP correspondent.
"Many teenagers who were in shops and fast food sector see the police charge, gas and bludgeon .. No possibility of exit is left to them and they can not therefore obey the injunctions of dispersion", s instigated by Sophie Mazas, the president of the Human Rights League of Herault.
Some protesters, wearing gas masks, helmets or balaclavas, threw smoke and firecrackers, while a mobile speaker spit out the music of the "Star Wars" saga.
Among the slogans written on the banners, "The hell of the poor is the paradise of the rich", "People, you have the duty of insurrection when the government violates your rights" or "It is capitalism that rots us the life".
"The social problems remain the same as at the beginning of the movement of + yellow vests +," explained AFP Jean, a sociologist aged 50. "There are too many inequalities, too many tense and difficult job situations ... Even for the police, who are around us today, it's difficult."
In front of the door of her cosmetics shop, costume jewelery and fashion accessories, Louise, a shopkeeper, said "support yellow + vests, from the beginning". "We pay too much, we work to pay the URSSAF, the RSI and so-called pensions, it is mainly to pay people who do not work and who touch the RSA," she continued.
© 2019 AFP