Dozens of protesters have clashed with police in the French capital Paris in fresh demonstrations against a controversial draft security law.
Police fired tear gas after hooded protesters smashed shop windows and set several vehicles alight.
Nearly 100 rallies were planned nationwide on Saturday over the law that would make it a criminal offence to publish pictures of police officers.
Opponents say the bill undermines press freedom to document police brutality.
France has seen weekly nationwide protests over the draft bill, which intensified after footage emerged of three white policemen racially abusing and beating a black music producer.
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Macron 'shame' at police beating of black man
Responding to the backlash, President Emmanuel Macron's ruling party said last week that parts of the law would be rewritten. However, this has not done enough to assuage its opponents.
On Friday Mr Macron acknowledged "there are police who are violent" and said "they need to be punished", in a live interview with Brut, a youth-focused news portal site.
What happened on Saturday?
Thousands of people, including members of the anti-government Yellow Vest movement, had been marching peacefully in the capital when pockets of protesters, dressed in black and with their faces covered, started launching projectiles at riot police, Reuters reports.
The windows of a supermarket, property agency and bank were smashed, according to the AFP news agency, and police responded to the violence by firing tear gas.
Some of the demonstrators set up impromptu barricades in the street which they set on fire, it added.
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Paris police, quoted by BFM TV, said some 500 rioters had infiltrated the protest. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 22 people had been detained over the incidents.
Police had been heavily deployed to the capital in a bid to avoid a repeat of the violent clashes seen there last weekend over the same law, which left dozens wounded.
Peaceful protests were staged elsewhere across France, including Marseille, Lyon and Rennes.
In his interview with Brut on Friday, President Macron lashed out at earlier violence in Paris, which he blamed on "crazy people".
He said an online national platform would be launched for people to flag up unnecessary police checks, and that police would be wearing body cameras more widely from June 2021.
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Why are people angry about the bill?
Article 24 of the proposed bill makes it a criminal offence to publish images of on-duty police officers with the intent to harm their "physical or psychological integrity".
It says offenders could face up to a year in prison and be fined €45,000 (£40,500; $54,000).
Advocates say the article will protect police from harassment and targeting on social media.
But critics say media freedom and citizens' right to film police action must not be impeded, as the French police are now under intense scrutiny for alleged racism.
Images of music producer Michel Zecler being kicked and punched at his Paris studio last month by three white policemen shocked the nation, and further enraged opponents to the bill.
Since then, four officers have been placed under criminal investigation and members of President Macron's ruling party have pledged to "completely" rewrite part of the new law.
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"We know that doubts persist about it...while we can never tolerate any reduction of press freedom or images," said Christophe Castaner, who heads Mr Macron's group of centrist MPs in parliament.
A number of arrests were made on Saturday as thousands of protesters once again took to the streets and clashed with police amid uproar over the government's new security law.
Demonstrations were also held against police violence in the country, as well protesters demanding better economic security.
Almost 90 rallies were organised on the weekend, with a procession in the capital Paris taking off just after 2pm, behind banners stating "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for whom!".
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin tweeted that 22 people were arrested in Paris, saying there were numerous acts of vandalism and clashes with police.
Darmanin thanked police, saying: "Thank you to the forces of law and order mobilised today, sometimes in the face of very violent individuals."
The unrest is largely over a global security bill that would have made it illegal to film and identify police officers with intent to “harm their physical or psychological integrity".
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After widespread outcry over the proposed bill, the government made a concession in revisiting that specific clause, but opponents continue to argue the bill could undermine the freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom to demonstrate.
Last weekend, organisers of the protests - a collective of trade unions and associations - said there were some 500,000 people out on the streets, in an ongoing wave of protest which was only fuelled by the police beating of black music producer Michel Zecler, video of which was shared online.
Emmanuel Macron said in an interview given to the website Brut on Friday: "I can not let it be said that we are reducing freedoms in France," said the President of the Republic. "It's a big lie. We are not Hungary or Turkey."
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Riot officers fire teargas and charge protesters in one incident after fireworks launched at their lines
The French government’s attempts to calm growing public fury over new legislation deemed a danger to civil liberties was challenged with a new wave of protests across the country on Saturday.
A largely peaceful march against the contested global security law and police violence in Paris degenerated after hooded and black-clad casseurs – vandals – disrupted the demonstration for the second weekend in a row. Clusters of hooded youths set fire to vehicles, smashed shop windows and hurled stones and molotov cocktails at police, who responded with water cannons and teargas.
About 90 demonstrations were organised across the rest of France, most of which passed off without major incident.
France security law incompatible with human rights, say UN experts
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France is facing a number of explosive factors – a bitterly contested law, a debate over police violence, fears of terrorism after the beheading of a school teacher and the ongoing Covid-19 crisis – combining to provide what one commentator called “the wood, the petrol and the matches” to set the country alight.
The “liberty marches” – combined with the annual union day of protests against “unemployment and precariousness” held on the first Saturday in December – reflected ongoing fierce opposition to article 24 of the new security law. The article makes it punishable to publish photographs or videos identifying police or gendarmes with “intent” to cause psychological or physical harm, and is seen as a direct attack on press freedom.
The government has promised to completely rewrite article 24, but a report by United Nations experts last week expressed concern about other parts of the legislation that has already been passed by MPs in the Assemblée Nationale, describing it as “incompatible” with international law and human rights. The report expressed particular concern about giving police powers to monitor crowds with drones and facial recognition.
At the centre of the current conflagration, President Emmanuel Macron and his hardline interior minister Gérald Darmanin have engaged in a classic good-cop-bad-cop routine. Last week, Macron insisted France was not veering to the right: “France is not an authoritarian state. It is not Hungary or Turkey,” he said.
Increasingly stung by criticism from national and particularly international media that has accused him of pandering to Marine Le Pen’s core electorate, Macron spent over two hours answering questions directly on Brut, a video site popular with the young. During what some French press called “Operation Seduction”, he rejected the term “police violence”, which he said was being used as a political “manipulation”, but said, “There are police who are violent ... but there are also people who are violent”, adding that there had to be “zero tolerance” for both.
France cracks down on 76 mosques suspected of 'separatism'
Macron, who has faced criticism over his “separatism” law, aimed at reinforcing the country’s secular traditions and combating Islamist extremism, but seen as targeting the country’s wider Muslim community, also announced he would set up a “discrimination alert” site, adding: “Today, when the colour of our skin isn’t white, we are more often stopped and checked [by police] … which is unacceptable.”
France’s police unions were not seduced and threatened to stop arresting and checking people’s papers altogether.
Meanwhile, Darmanin maintained his support for the country’s police and gendarmes following accusations of violence, saying he “would not abandon them”. He also announced a government crackdown on 76 mosques suspected of “separatism” and being “breeding grounds of terrorism”, and the dissolution of the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France, which he acccused of being a “dispensary of Islamic extremism”, a move criticised by Amnesty International. And he announced that 66 “radicalised foreigners” had been expelled from France, and more would be on their way.
Opinion polls shed no light on how the French feel, with answers to the question ‘Do you have confidence in the police?’ ranging from 37% to 60% positive. “Macron is triangulating; that means trying to pick up votes from the right and the left,” one political source, who did not want to be named, told the Observer. “It’s a very delicate and difficult balance, but today it’s not the French socialist party that represents the working class – it’s Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, and therein lies the problem.”
“The Gallic people have an ambivalence towards authority and towards the police, but want the state to protect them. It’s the one thing left the state can do for them. Everything else, socially, economically, has failed. We’re in a society where violence has become normal. Stress levels are so high even the slightest thing gets blown up out of all proportion. Today we have incidents of police violence, a controversial law, and a nation of people hyper-stressed by Covid: that’s the wood, the petrol and the matches to light the fire.”
William Drozdiak, a veteran foreign correspondent and author of The Last President of Europe, about Macron, said Macron was using a “classic political tactic”.
“When you recognise the majority of voters are to your right – centre right and far right – and your challenge is coming from there … you are going to follow policies you think are supported by the majority of the people. Getting tough on law and order is a classic move, and it’s generally seen as popular by the French public,” Drozdiak told the website Pandemonium U.
“This recent controversy over the law to protect the police was very poorly written and is going to be redrafted, which I think was the right thing to do ... that I think will defuse the protests.”
Professor François Heisbourg, senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former French government adviser, dismissed the protests as “dog bites man” non-news.
“It’s about police brutality and ill-conceived legislation and certainly not as serious as the poll tax demonstrations in the UK in the 1980s or the Paras in Londonderry. The French like having demonstrations. That’s what they do. It’s not necessary to see a major crisis in the country every time.”
He added: “Britons go berserk if you try to give them identity cards. The French go berserk if you try to give them CCTV cameras. Rightwing people are unhappy. Left people are unhappy. It’s called democracy. This is a very basic civil liberties issue and there’s nothing extraordinary about it.”
Violence erupted in Paris on Saturday for the second consecutive weekend at a mass protest against a new security law, with demonstrators clashing with police, vehicles set alight and shop windows smashed.
Dozens of hooded protesters launched projectiles at riot police, smashed up shop windows, torched cars and burned barricades during a demonstration in the French capital on Saturday against police violence. The police fired back volleys of tear gas.
Thousands of people had begun marching peacefully in Paris when the clashes erupted between police and pockets of protesters, most dressed in black and their faces covered. Some used hammers to break up paving stones.
Windows of a supermarket, property agency and bank were broken while several cars burst into flames along Avenue Gambetta as demonstrators marched toward the central Place de la Republique, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.
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The protesters were denouncing police brutality and President Emmanuel Macron's security policy plans which the demonstrators say would restrict civil liberties.
They waved banners that read "France, land of police rights" and "Withdrawal of the security law."
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on Twitter that police in Paris were facing "very violent individuals."
Thirty people have been detained so far Saturday, Paris police said on Twitter, with a police source blaming the violence on up to 500 radical individuals who took part.
France has been hit by a wave of street protests after the government introduced a security bill in parliament that set out to increase its surveillance tools and restrict rights on circulating images of police officers in the media and online.
