LAGOS OCTOBER 31ST (NEWSRANGERS)-Cost-of-living protests that began in France have spread to Germany where demonstrations to coincide with Halloween were underway on Saturday, with tens of thousands of people turning out across the country.
The new German youth-led movement dubbed “Gen Z has got this!” is protesting against the high cost of living, underfunded schools and universities, environmental concerns and a potential reintroduction of mandatory military service. Protests were planned in major cities including Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich.
While the protest in the German capital appeared peaceful, water cannons and riot police were deployed in Cologne and Hamburg.
Police in Cologne said water cannons were used after some protesters set off fireworks during a march in the city center. “Our measures are directed against troublemakers and violent individuals – not against peaceful participants,” the police said in a statement.
In Hamburg, riot police responded after barriers were set on fire and emergency service workers attacked. “There has been an increase in incidents of emergency personnel being pelted with pyrotechnics and construction (materials) … our riot police are taking immediate action against this,” the police said.
Organizers of ‘Gen Z regelt’ planned the large day of action to coincide with Halloween, to maximize turnout and visibility.
“We are young people who no longer want to watch decisions being made about our future without us,” the movement states on its website. It adds that the intention is to protest peacefully and organizers instruct participants to keep their faces visible, even in Halloween costumes.
Extra German police officers have been deployed nationwide in preparation for the protest, and the luxury shops lining Berlin’s upmarket Kurfürstendamm shopping street have boarded up their windows as a precautionary measure.
The German youth movement follows a broader wave of protests that have swept Europe, including significant unrest in France, which has been hit by rioting and looting and is now facing another weekend of rallies.
More nationwide protests from the Yellow Vests movement were also underway in France on Saturday, in what has been billed as the third act of demonstrations, following earlier protests on October 17 and 24. Students and some unions are also expected to join.
French Interior Ministry said 320,000 people were protesting across the country on Saturday, with 70,000 turning up in Paris. That is a significantly smaller number than the 550,000 who demonstrated on October 17 and the 410,000 who showed up last week.
The ministry said that as of 6 p.m. local time, 296 people had been detained countrywide.
Warning of a “very high risk of public disorder,” France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced this week that demonstrations would only be authorized outside town centers, with 70,000 extra law enforcement officers deployed nationwide.
The protest were mostly peaceful, except for a few incidents. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that “radical elements at the tail end of the processions” in several cities. including Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes, Lille, Nantes, Marseille, and Lyon, “attempted to enter city centers with the intent to cause damage and engage in looting.”
The ministry said the police intervened and “thwarted” those attempts.
Police in Rennes in Brittany in northwest France, said that while the main march planned for Saturday “proceeded calmly along the planned route,” several hundred violent individuals began attacking the police after the protest ended, throwing projectiles and setting off fires.
Violence has plagued the protests in recent week, with the ministry saying on Friday that as of October 29, at least 1,193 police officers had been injured since the start of the protests.
Halloween was adding a new complication to the protests, with Nuñez warning of separate calls for gatherings across France from 8 p.m. local time “by radical far-left groups and radicalized Yellow Vests.”
He said some messages invoked Halloween while calling for “revolution” and “insurrection,” describing them as incitements to serious public disorder and warning that the gatherings would be banned.
In recent days, the word “purge” has been circulating across social media platforms, a reference to the dystopian film franchise which depicts a world where all crime is legalized for a 12-hour period each year.
“At Halloween, the rules remain the same!” warned the Paris police on X, reminding people that concealing one’s face in public is punishable by a €150 ($170) fine, while carrying a weapon, even a fake one, can carry a sentence of up to three years in prison and a €45,000 ($50,398) fine.
The French protests began in late September, led by high school students demanding improvements to deteriorating school buildings, teacher shortages and a lack of resources, as well as changes to the university admissions system.
The protests then morphed into something bigger, with the Yellow Vests, which began as a movement against soaring fuel prices, among those taking to the streets.
The images of violence and looting from the October 17 protests are still haunting French officials. That day, more than 550,000 people took to the streets across France, according to the Interior Ministry, more than 3,000 shops were attacked or looted, with some destroyed and over 2,700 people were arrested.
Asked about the students injured during the protests, President Emmanuel Macron described the violence as a “collective failure.”
“I think no high school student started pushing for their demands expecting to suffer such terrible consequences. And I don’t know a single police officer who signed up to find themselves caught up in such terrible and violent moments either,” he told Youtuber Hugo Travers.
Saturday’s demonstration comes ahead of November 5, when all eyes will be on a nationwide strike and mobilization called by the inter-union coalition over rising living costs.
CNN
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