France allows Saturday's protests only outside city centres and deploys 70,000 police; student groups vow to keep marching

French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said on Thursday 29 October that demonstrations planned for Saturday 31 October would be “authorised outside city centres”, with prefects deciding on each gathering, and that 70,000 police and gendarmes would be deployed, the same number as on 24 October, BFMTV reported.

Nuñez said the authorities had seen many calls on social media for gatherings at around 8pm on Saturday, Halloween night, which he attributed to the radical far left. “These gatherings will of course be banned by the prefects,” he said, adding that any that went ahead would be dispersed. He said police would apply “a doctrine of extreme firmness” to groups considered at risk.

The unions said the Paris police authority had refused their proposed Bastille-Nation route and offered a route on the city’s edge, from Porte de Bagnolet to Porte de Charenton. The Inter-fac Île-de-France student group said it would consider legal challenges to what it called a “general and disproportionate ban”.

Students’ response

Nuñez met high-school and university organisations on Thursday. “We will keep mobilising as long as the police come into universities,” said Sabrine Kharbach, spokesperson for Union étudiante, adding that members would march on Saturday and on 5 November. Louis Letoublon of the group Les Lycéens! said the minister was “incapable of answering for police repression”, BFMTV reported.

On Tuesday evening, President Emmanuel Macron called for classes to resume on Monday and “for calm to return”. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said the government “should surely have been quicker” to respond to students’ demands.

See also: French Senate passes the ‘casseurs-payeurs’ bill.