France protests turn chaotic in Paris as police fire tear gas and use water cannons

We're going to go back to our top story now with protesters taking to the streets of Paris. Once again, Rebecca Collard is standing by for us there. Rebecca, can you just give us an idea of what it's like there now? We can see plumes of tear gas behind you. Yeah, there's plumes of tear gas also just in the last few minutes here. They started using some sort of water cannon from this side of the square. You can see people are running again out of the square. There's these mostly young people trying to leave the square. so more plumes of tear gas. You can see a large volume. Okay, come back, back, back, back, back, back. Are you okay there, Rebecca? It looks like we've lost connection with Rebecca at this point in time, but you can see just how dangerous it is there with the tear gas being fired all over the place. Rebecca, first of all, can you hear me? No, we've lost connection with Rebecca there. in the centre of Paris. We know that this is all happening as the French President Emmanuel Macron is due to be holding a crisis meeting a day after these violent protesters really brought the country to a standstill and left widespread destruction on Saturday. We know he's meeting with Prime Minister Sébastien Le Cornu, some of his cabinet members as as well as senior police officers in Paris as they try and come up with a plan to try and get these protests back under control. I understand we've got you back now, Rebecca. First of all, just checking that you're okay and give us an idea of what it is like there, a sense of the mood right now. Yeah, like you said, they are trying to get these protesters under control and that doesn't seem to be possible at the moment. There is just this constant wave of protesters filling this square behind me. And then you can see plumes of tear gas, like the one that we just saw, trying to disperse them. So it has really been kind of chaos for the last few hours, and that chaos seems to be ramping up. As you can see, the sun is setting here in Paris. So the question is, what is tonight going to look like, whether or not these riot police—and there are probably hundreds of riot police surrounding this area—whether or not they're able to get this protest under control and these protesters dispersed before the sun sets here and possibly things get more hectic and more chaotic tonight. Can you just give us an idea? We're looking at some of the latest pictures with dozens and dozens of riot police yet again on the streets. Can you give us an idea how many are there where you are versus how many protesters have returned to the streets today? You know, I will say I think there could be, there's many more than dozens, possibly in the hundreds, because every street seems to have kind of a row of riot police all the way around the square. And even this morning, there was dozens of police vans around here. You can see here, OK, these protesters now are running into the square. There's another rush of protesters. It's very difficult to know how many protesters are here, because what you see is this kind of wave of protesters, like you're seeing right now, run into the square. They seem to have been pushed into the square. And I will say this again. What is kind of unusual here that I haven't seen in previous protests in the Middle East or Europe is that the police seem to be pushing the protesters with tear gas into the square. They gather in the square, and then there is a volley of tear gas that seems to be, again, pushing them out. And I will say because of that, it's difficult to know how many protesters are here, hundreds at least, possibly thousands. But because of the way that these protesters are going in and out, it's very difficult to know exactly how many protesters are here. and, again, how many riot police. But there's definitely a very, very strong police presence on the street and also a lot of protesters. I will say one of the other things that's a bit unusual is, you know, you have these volleys of tear gas, you have these protesters, you have some rocks being thrown, this water cannon, stun grenades, and then every so often you'll see a kind of a family walking by along the street or people drinking coffee just a block away. So, you know, in many ways it seems that some people here in Paris are trying to go about their normal life, oh, that's another very big volley of tear gas. It's quite strong now. It is very good. But we might have to move back a little bit. OK. Well, while you've moved back for a little bit, we've just seen the French president, Emmanuel Macron, holding a crisis meeting with Cabinet members, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, as well as a number of senior police officers, all at that meeting in Paris, trying to come up with some sort of plan to deal with the violence, the destruction and the chaos that we have seen on the streets of France over the last 24 hours or so. Here he is. These are the latest pictures from just literally a couple of minutes ago. He is due to address the French people in a national address a little later on in the coming hours in the next two or three hours which we will obviously take live here on Al Jazeera as he tries to come up with some sort of plan to first of all make sure the the streets of Paris are calm tonight and and then obviously in the months ahead for the rest of his presidency which is due to come to an end in April next year we're going to go back to Rebecca now what options does the French president actually have at his disposal right now? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, so far, and many protesters have mentioned this to us as well, the only option the government seems to have used is this tear gas that you can see is very thick here now. Me and the crew are also quite affected by it, and so far the option seems to have been this security solution. So the tear gas, the riot police trying to clear protesters. But as far as bigger picture solutions go to this, It is very difficult to see what Macron and his ministers that he's meeting with at the moment are going to be able to come up with. The French economy is in a very difficult position. The demands that we've heard from young people and students, especially about more funding for education, where that money is going to come from, and now, you know, as we said, this is quite a widespread protest about cost of living and grievances that French people have. So it's really difficult to hear, to think about what kind of a solution he would come up to, possibly they're coming up with something now, but it's difficult to see what he could possibly say that would quell the anger that we've seen in the streets and that we're seeing in the streets again tonight, but of course we will be watching to see what he says in a couple of hours from now. Obviously, like you mentioned, the cost of living and the struggling public services, that's really what kick-started these protests, but is the violence, the chaos that we're witnessing now, and I guess the level of destruction done to businesses and infrastructure right around France, not just in Paris obviously, is that undermining the message that the protesters are actually trying to send? Do they still have the majority of the public behind them in their efforts at this point? I mean, that's an excellent question as well, and I think it's going to be hard to say how people are going to feel, because there is definitely a part of the population that is also going to be angry about the smashed glass that I see in front of me, the boarded-up windows, you know, this destruction in the center of Paris and, as you said, really cities across France. And so, you know, now you have a lot of this anger in both cases, both about the grievances of the protesters directed against the government and Macron, but also questions being asked of the government about why they're not able to control these protests. We saw, of course, the smashing of shops, smashing of public property, and also some looting yesterday in French cities. So whether or not this is going to undermine the demands of—oh, we may have to move here. Okay. Whether or not that will undermine the demands of these protesters, it's not clear at the moment. There's definitely anger against some of the activities that we've seen. But—and, of course, it's very difficult to tell, even when we're here, you know, like, people that we talked to and they have their grievances and then who is the one that are those the same people that are smashing the windows and there are those the same people that are that seem to have been causing some of the chaos we've seen. So it's going to be an interesting couple of days. We're going to see what Macron says tonight the public reaction to that and then how much support these protests have kind of as the as the new week starts tomorrow. Protests have really marked Macron's presidency. Is this going to be his legacy as his presidency comes to an end in less than six months? Yeah. And I think that's probably something that he's worried about. And of course, this country is going to elections next year. And all of this is going to be very much on the minds of French citizens as they go into elections next year. They're going to remember the scenes in the streets of Paris and whether or not, to your question, they remember those as, you know, the legitimate grievances of protesters and people about the cost of living and the education system, or whether what they remember is this vandalism and the kind of violence and damage that we've seen in the streets. Either way, French citizens are going to be thinking about this, and I think that you may be right about that, that this will be part of his legacy, of Macron's legacy. Rebecca, can you just give us an idea, once again, exactly where you are, the Place de la République, the significance of it, why protesters gather there. Yeah, I don't know if we're able to show you, actually. It's quite—you have this major statue in the middle of the square here, and you can actually see—I don't know if he can zoom in for you—at this top, protesters have actually put this yellow vest on this statue, kind of symbolically saying that this is, you know, that they are occupying this space, that this is the place of protest. And over the last hour, at the moment, you can't see on this side, but a lot of protesters are actually climbing up on this monument and occupying this monument and sort of taking control of both this square and also the monument in the middle. And, of course, also it's covered with graffiti, a lot of that graffiti, specifically, I will say, against Macron. Over the course of the day, I've seen so much graffiti that really talks specifically specifically about Macron and the anger against Macron. And also you see it here on this monument and also directed against the police. So graffiti, which is specifically, you know, against the police. And I will say, I'll just add as well, one of the things that we've also heard from a lot of protesters is that they are very unhappy with the way the police has cracked down. So while some people, I think, in this country are asking why the police are unable to control the protesters, There's a lot of people here feel like this has been a very heavy-handed response by the police to the protesters. So this tear gas that we're being affected by at the moment, these stun grenades and also this water cannon that they're starting to use, some people feel here is just too heavy-handed. Rebecca, we obviously know that there were widespread protests and damage across France in many places, Lyon, Marseille, Rennes, to name a few, on Saturday. I know that you're in the centre of Paris right now, but do you have any idea if what's happening there is also happening again around France? We know that there was calls for more protests, but some of our reporters that were out in other cities today said that those weren't large gatherings. So at the moment, we don't have a sense of how kind of widespread this is. This is definitely the epicentre. This is the place where we saw the largest protests. It was extremely packed yesterday. It was very difficult even for our teams to get a signal up. It was a very packed place. definitely this is the epicenter but whether or not we're going to as I said again like you can see here the Sun is setting nightfall and this of course is the time when we may see more protests pop up in other cities and especially in regards to things like the like the damage and the and the looting the things that we saw yesterday a lot of those things happen after nightfall so we will of course be watching in the next few hours to see to see what is happening in other French cities we know that this started with students with high school students unhappy with some of the infrastructure, the degradation of their schools, overworked, understaffed teachers and faculty, but it's really spread since then. The Yellow Vests were involved in yesterday's protest. Can you tell us a little bit about the significance of that, the history of that group, and how potentially they became involved in these latest protests? Yeah. So the Yellow Vest protests really started in 2018, and those were originally kind of protests about the cost of living and particularly the cost of fuel. And they were obviously large protests, maybe some of the largest we've seen until this week, in recent years anyway. But I think this is a classic case, and you see this really across countries in Europe and the moment as well, the same sort of thing that we saw in Spain, where there was kind of this one case of this woman who was being evicted from her apartment, and this cost of living crisis in this apartment, and this cost of apartments and people being pushed out of their apartments. And then it grew into this larger movement. Also now in Albania, which started with a protest against, you know, the development of this island, has really turned into these kind of very widespread large protests. And that is, I think, what we're also seeing in France. And, of course, it makes sense. You know, it started with grievances of students, but other people have grievances as well. The cost of living is high. People are upset about the way the economy is being managed. A lot of them have spoken about the fact that because not just France, but a lot of countries in Europe are putting a lot of budgets now into rearmament rather than into social services. Young people like these are obviously very angry. They're saying yes, but I think what they mean is no. Yeah, so they are, so, you know, yeah, you can see there's a lot of people here, young people like this that are very, very, very angry about what's happening. And of course, the cost of living crisis is affecting everybody. People feel like the money is being set up, spent on the wrong things. And, you know, the young people we were talking to were saying really directly that they want more taxes for wealthier French people. So they went as far to say that their slogan was eat the rich. They really feel like this is partly, oh, we're going to have to move here a little bit. shows how volatile the situation is there in Paris. Sorry about that. No, no, no. We understand, Rebecca. Yeah, and very unpredictable. It obviously just shows how unpredictable, how volatile everything is, and how fast-moving it is at this point in time as well. Yeah, and I think that's the thing. Like I said before, everything will seem calm for a few minutes, and all of a sudden, there will be this volley of tear gas, and then you will have this rush of people, and it's very difficult to know where people could be. So at the moment, it's not like you have a kind of a part of the protest, which is which I think is how things started in some ways yesterday, that there was a kind of peaceful protest, more classic protest. And then you had kind of another then you kind of had it evolve into this sort of situation. And at the moment, what you what you what you have really is this. You have this kind of I don't want to call it a cat and mouse game because that's not exactly what's going on here. But you kind of have people rushing the square, people like this, that obviously are also wanting to tell us, you know, what's going on and what they're upset about. Yeah, very angry. Or maybe just, yeah, okay. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, you can see people here, a lot of people, a lot of people very angry about what's happening. and this is, as you said, just unpredictable because we'll be standing here, everything will seem calm and then we will see a volley of tear gas and then kind of a wall of people running towards us trying to escape this tear gas. So it's difficult to see. Okay. Okay, we're going to let you go, Rebecca. We really do appreciate you giving us the very, very latest from the centre of Paris. That was Rebecca Collard for us, right in the thick of things there.