France is cracking down after antigovernment demonstrations in cities and towns devolved into the most destructive riots in decades as riots and looting on Saturday caused nationwide damage and deepened a sense of national reckoning.
On Monday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said he had ordered localized curfews for that night, a sign that the French state was trying to reassert control after the widespread chaos. He said a map detailing the areas under restrictions would be made public by Monday night.
The move came amid an escalating political blame game, which gathered steam on Sunday as the chaos subsided. Mr. Lecornu blamed the far left for the unrest, saying that the French police had done a good job against a “shadowy network” of instigators who he said were seeking to orchestrate “a profound disorder” in France before presidential elections in April.
The main far-left party has repeatedly blamed his government for the discontent. And French citizens are caught in the middle of the finger-pointing as they try to carry on with daily life in cities littered with broken glass and the charred skeletons of burned cars.
The protests have heightened a sense of fiscal and social crisis in France, the European Union’s second-largest economy. And there’s more debate to come: The government is trying to pass an unpopular belt-tightening budget as France heads toward the elections.
What happened this weekend?
The violence was a convergence of a weeks-old student movement seeking better school conditions, an emerging national movement protesting high living costs and opportunistic rioters who used the demonstrations as a cover for looting.
More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France on Saturday, the Interior Ministry said, on the biggest day of protest since the demonstrations began about a month ago. A major union, the C.G.T., gave a higher estimate, saying that 800,000 protesters had turned out.
Amid many peaceful demonstrations, rioters vandalized about 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state, leading to approximately 2,000 arrests. An arson attack largely destroyed the town hall in Limoges, in central France. In Marseille, the second-largest city, masked people broke into a government building and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the republic.
On Monday, the government estimated that at least 3,000 businesses across the country had been pillaged over the weekend.
Why are students protesting?
High school students started protesting last month to express frustration with the condition of their schools.
They have pointed to crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and staff, and underfunding. Many also called for an overhaul of state-run admissions platforms for higher education and universities that they said were unfairly selective.
Students have blockaded hundreds of schools. They have set fire to, or damaged, at least 24 of them, according to the government. Thousands have been arrested since September and over 1,000 police officers, students and school staff members have been hurt.
The students’ anger has been exacerbated by the police’s forceful response. Prosecutors and a police watchdog are investigating at least 34 cases involving accusations of police misconduct during the protests.
The cases include a 15-year-old boy whose left hand was ripped off, officials said, most likely by the explosion of a police stun grenade; and a 14-year-old boy maimed by a tear-gas grenade that an officer had fired at close range.
Why did other groups join the students?
This month, labor unions and other campaign groups have increasingly joined the student demonstrations. They have held bigger rallies to express solidarity as well as to protest a broader range of issues.
Some are angry over the cost of living and rising fuel prices that have surged, in part, because of the war in Iran. Farmers have also joined, angry at agricultural costs.
Social media accounts associated with the “yellow vest” protest movement, which emerged in France nearly a decade ago with roadside demonstrations against high gas prices and other issues, have joined calls for demonstrations.
And left-wing parties have also seized on the protests as part of a wider expression of discontent at President Emmanuel Macron, who is limited to two terms and is nearing the end of his time in office.
Such discontent has a long history in France, where student-led protests in 1968 nearly toppled the government and helped transform French society.
What is the political fallout?
On Monday, high-level officials admitted failure.
Laurent Nuñez, the interior minister, offered something of an apology on national radio, saying that the police had been underprepared to deal with the scale of the riots that spun off from the mostly peaceful protests in the country.
He said he had offered his resignation to Mr. Macron but that it had not been accepted.
Gérald Darmanin, the justice minister, also acknowledged that the authorities had “undeniably failed” in the face of the violence.
On Sunday, far-right leaders and the centrist government blamed the far left for the chaos. They pointed in particular to a major far-left party, France Unbowed, that they said had provoked the unrest.
Mr. Lecornu, the prime minister, accused party leaders of sowing distrust among student protesters about the police and said some rioters were members of the “ultra-left.”
France Unbowed has rejected that accusation, and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has blamed the government for actions that he said had made the unrest more likely.
Mr. Mélenchon said on social media that Mr. Lecornu was “responsible for the chaos because of “incompetence or a worst-case strategy to create a party of order that would make people forget his failure in public finances.”
Mr. Lecornu did not respond to that accusation.
What happens next?
As of the weekend, high school students were on a two-week vacation. Some of the groups that joined the demonstrations in solidarity appeared determined to keep protesting.
Some protesters who participated in the huge demonstrations over the weekend have called for another mass action next weekend.
The government is trying to signal that it is ready: On Monday, Mr. Nuñez, the interior minister, said that police numbers would be reinforced, “particularly this weekend,” around France.
Reporting was contributed by Lynsey Chutel, Ségolène Le Stradic, Giulia Imbert and Zane Irwin.
The post Huge Riots and Antigovernment Protests in France: What to Know appeared first on New York Times.
