Follow-Up: Paris Arrests Rise to 191 on France Protest Day; Organizers Put Nationwide Turnout Above 800,000
As France's nationwide day of protests on Saturday, October 17 moved into the evening, updated figures emerged from several sources. The Paris police prefecture's count of arrests in the capital rose through the day to 191 by 6 p.m., about 90 percent of them adults. The Interior Ministry's nationwide arrest total, by contrast, still stood at the 272 reported at 3 p.m.; no full-day national tally had been published by the evening, and no national turnout figure had been released either — the ministry's only participation figure remained the midday count of 32,800 people outside the Paris region.
Organizers published their own final tally, putting nationwide turnout above 800,000. The CGT union first reported more than 500,000 participants at 5 p.m., then aligned with the figure of over 800,000 advanced by youth and Yellow Vest organizations after reports came in from major cities including Montpellier, Strasbourg, Lille, Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille. That figure is the organizers' own count and is reported separately from official numbers.
The day's actions brought together former Yellow Vest members, high school and university students, climate activists and farmers over the cost of living, with between 1,500 and 1,750 actions announced across France. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu denounced what he called violence of an extreme intensity on the margins of the protests.
In Paris, the union and Yellow Vest march set off from Place de la Republique at 2 p.m. toward Place de Clichy. Before it began, several hundred masked demonstrators in black clashed with police, who used tear gas and water cannon, and vehicles were set on fire in a nearby street; a spontaneous procession heading toward the Elysee Palace was pushed back and dispersed near Avenue Gabriel. More than 5,000 police officers and gendarmes were deployed in the capital.
Municipal buildings were targeted in other cities: in Lille, demonstrators forced their way into several entrances of the city hall and vandalized part of the premises, and windows of a nearby middle school were broken; in Marseille, where initial estimates put the march at nearly 20,000 people, several dozen protesters briefly entered the city hall and a municipal police station on the Canebiere was vandalized, which Mayor Benoit Payan denounced. In Lyon, the tourist office on Place Bellecour was ransacked and set on fire earlier in the day, as reported previously by GSM.
GSM reported the Interior Ministry's midday figure of 166 arrests and its 3 p.m. figure of 272 arrests earlier in the day, and will follow up if the ministry publishes a full-day final tally later in the evening or on Sunday. (GSM, based on Europe 1 live coverage and French media reports)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 资料图：法国马赛老港全景，山上为守护圣母圣殿；马赛是10月17日抗议的主要城市之一，游行队伍行经老港旁的卡内比埃大道一带。Ingo Mehling 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，Wikimedia Commons。
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