A new mobilization against the health pass and compulsory vaccination for certain professions was held in several French cities on Saturday, August 14.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for the fifth week in a row.
In Paris, the two main processions pounded the pavement behind a wide range of slogans such as "liberate France", "stop coronafolie" or "take back your Macron pass and get out".
"There is a division between those who have the pass, and therefore privileges, and the others", denounced Béatrice Cazal, 47, who marched in the capital at the call of the former figure of the National Rally Florian Philippot and his Patriots movement.
In the competing Parisian parade organized by yellow vests, Yann Fontaine, a 30-year-old notary clerk from the Indre, saw in the health past "a freedom-killing, segregationist measure".
>> To read: Florian Philippot and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, arsonists of the anti-ax movement
In Lille, 2,650 demonstrators, according to the prefecture, led by many yellow vests, roamed the city center.
Marie, a 36-year-old nurse from the Valenciennes hospital center, came to defend "true freedom, that of the body and of conscience".
"I am totally against the obligation to be vaccinated, especially since we are still at an experimental stage," she argued, ready to change jobs rather than be vaccinated.
>> True or false: the arguments of Covid-19 anti-vaccines scrutinized
Begun in the heart of summer, this heterogeneous anti-government mobilization continues to grow.
Across the country, they were just over 237,000 last week, according to the Interior Ministry, more than double the size of the movement's beginnings in mid-July.
Contestation that goes beyond the anti-vaccine or conspiracy movement alone
Protesters accuse the government of underestimating the anti-health pass protest.
The militant collective Le Nombre jaune, which publishes a city-by-city count, last Saturday recorded more than 415,000 "minimum" participants in France.
Some 250,000 people are still expected in the streets this weekend, according to a police source.
Without major incident so far, the protest attracts families and apolitical first-time demonstrators as well as caregivers or firefighters in uniform and goes beyond the sole anti-vaccine or conspiracy movement.
>> To read: Martine Wonner, former LREM deputy who became the face of the anti-health pass
In the procession that left the Old Port of Marseille, where many French flags could be seen, Hubert Vialle, 85, braved the heat to demonstrate under a straw hat.
"I am not an anti-vaccine (...) but I am afraid that messenger RNA will permanently modify the DNA of humanity," he explained.
"We want to know what we are being injected into the body. That does not make us foolish (...) All we want is freedom," added Françoise, 55-year-old financial advisor. , came to demonstrate in Bordeaux with the family from Périgord.
Since Monday, the health pass has been imposed in most public places.
Bars, restaurants, cinemas, long-distance transport, museums or hospitals require this QR code which testifies to a complete vaccination against Covid-19, a negative test or a recovery from the disease.
>> Health pass in France: where is it required?
Faced with this generalization of the device, validated by the Constitutional Council, the demonstrators denounce an obstacle to their "freedom" or a "lack of perspective" on vaccines.
A movement "about which we talk too much", according to Olivier Véran
A fringe of this very diverse movement, without real head, assumes an uninhibited anti-Semitism, while certain vaccination centers or pharmacies are treated as "collaborators" and victims of malicious acts.
These accusations annoy the government, faced with a deadly explosion of the epidemic in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
From the reconfigured Martinique, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, castigated Thursday a movement "about which we talk too much", and which sports "extremely colorful signs and sometimes extremely dubious, even completely filthy motives."
The executive still hopes to convince the undecided to achieve the goal of 50 million French people having received a first injection at the end of August, by brandishing the catastrophic situation in the West Indies as a foil.
"It's false, it's propaganda," retorted a Bordeaux protester, Françoise, 55, on Saturday.
The issuance of QR codes worth a health pass following an antigenic screening test for Covid-19 also experienced malfunctions in pharmacies on Saturday, after a giant blackout the day before.
The dialogue of the deaf between protesters and government could continue beyond the holidays.
Many protesters were worried on Saturday about a hypothetical obligation to vaccinate children to go to school.
In Paris, Carole, 44, resolutely opposed it, believing that her 17-year-old son "risks less if he catches the Covid than by being vaccinated".
With AFP
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