Toulouse. Face-to-face stretched between yellow vests and traders

A few dozen traders demonstrated this Saturday May 16 in Toulouse, supported by Mayor LR Jean-Luc Moudenc, in response to calls from Yellow vests to resume the parades on Saturday with the deconfinement.

The rally, which mainly brought together representatives of merchant associations, gave rise to several tense exchanges with some yellow vests and anti-capitalist militants.

The latter, for their part, held small scattered regroupings in the city center in the early afternoon, dispersed by large police forces, which proceeded to verbalizations.

“Against message”

We are here to say that it is irresponsible on the part of the yellow vests to demonstrate with the risks of contamination and irresponsible to block the shops, which are on respiratory assistancesaid Philippe Leon of a downtown merchant association.

The challenge is to let us rebuild our health, let us work, not to scare customers, underlined Jean-Marc Martinez, president of the Federation of the merchants of Toulouse at the origin of the action.

While yellow vests called for a return to the streets for the first Saturday of the deconfinement, there had to be a counter message, noted Jean-Luc Moudenc, who came briefly to bring his support.

The police then asked for the dispersal of the traders – masked but not all respecting physical distancing – in accordance with a prefectural order issued on Thursday to ban any gathering on the public highway of more than 10 people.

A yellow vest demonstration planned for the beginning of the afternoon in front of the Purpan hospital was also canceled, for lack of guarantees of the respect of sanitary measures, according to the main Facebook page of the movement in Toulouse.

Sud Santé and the CGT of the Toulouse University Hospital dissociated themselves from this call, after a first joint demonstration Monday, May 11, judging it counter productive for the claims of caregivers.

In the middle of the afternoon, large police forces had been deployed in central Toulouse, one of the bastions of yellow vests since the start of the movement, to prevent any regrouping of protesters.

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