Almost 300 arrested and 108 police officers injured in France in the Labor Day demonstrations

At least 291 people have been arrested this Monday throughout France, within the framework of the mobilizations for Labor Day, which beyond violent episodes, has brought together some 782,000 peopleaccording to the Ministry of the Interior, which has taken to the streets against the pension reform of the Macron government.

The French Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, has reported that due to clashes between some demonstrators and the Police, on the margins of the demonstrations, some 108 officers have been injured, of which 19 have had to be hospitalized, one of them with severe burns.

“If the vast majority of the demonstrators were pacifists, in Paris, Lyon and Nantes in particular, the Police are faced with extremely violent thugs that came with a goal: kill cops and attack the property of others”, denounced Minister Darmanin.

[¿Cómo funciona el sistema de pensiones en Francia y por qué los franceses rechazan la reforma?]

Darmanin has estimated at 300 incidents throughout France. In Paris, an agent is in hospital with serious injuries after being hit by a Molotov cocktail and 90 people have been arrested.

The Prime Minister of France, Elisabeth Borne, has described as “unacceptable” the scenes of violence that have taken place on the sidelines of some mobilizations, which in Paris have taken to the streets 112,000 people, according to the police.

For the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), they were 2.3 million, of which 550,000 in the capital.

Although the figures offered by the Ministry of the Interior fall far short of the aspirations of the unions – which sought to surpass the record mobilization of March 7 against the pension reform that took to the streets of the country about 1, 28 million people – are much higher than last year, when some 116,500 marched in France for Labor Day.