France prepares for day of protest a week after nationwide riots

France is on high alert ahead of a new day of nationwide protests on Saturday, a week after the country saw some of its worst unrest in decades.

Sweeping restrictions have been imposed on demonstrations across France but hundreds of thousands of protesters are still expected to gather in Paris and elsewhere for a second round of protests organised by students, trade unions and wider anti-government groups.

The interior ministry has said it will deploy 70,000 police officers, ramping up the security presence in French cities, after the government was accused by opposition parties of failing to foresee the scale of the unrest on 17 October.

"We will not let anything go unchallenged," said Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

"We will be uncompromising with the vandals, with the looters, and all those who commit acts of violence," he added, explaining that separate from the planned protests, numerous calls for violence had been seen on social media from the "far left and radical extreme left".

Hundreds of people have been jailed for vandalism, arson and looting after fast-track court hearings in recent days.

Disillusionment is high among the French public, who have seen cost-of-living pressures increase and who are faced with increasingly dire warnings that any future government will likely come with deep spending cuts.

The protests began with demands from high school students to improve school conditions and fix staff shortages, before violence took hold in places.

President Emmanuel Macron met high-school students' representatives on Friday ahead of Saturday's protests, and although they said he had made clear commitments to them, they said students should "continue to mobilise".

Macron told them his government would make a series of commitments to improve high school education from Monday, his advisers told French TV.

Macron decreed earlier this week that only demonstrations organised by a recognised trade unions would be permitted to take place on Saturday. Several key cities including Lyon, Nice and Montpellier have gone further by announcing blanket bans on gatherings .

Official announcements appear to have done little to deter organisers, with hundreds of large and small demonstrations planned across France.

After a week in which some cities have lived under partial curfews , there is an inconsistent picture as to what level of protest will be permitted by authorities.

While some mayors have pressed ahead with broad bans, others have agreed to allow demonstrations registered with authorities - for example, in Marseille, a previous order barring all protests was swiftly reversed to allow a trade union-organised march to go ahead.

In Paris, a march organised by the student trade union and supported by labour groups has been ordered to stick to a route that does not go through the city centre - though preparations for potential unrest in some of the city's most recognisable parts are under way regardless.

The Louvre, Orsay and Picasso museums will all be closed, a scheduled home match for football team PSG has been moved to Monday, while some businesses have boarded up their windows.

In a sign of how a student-led protest movement expanded to become a wider anti-government outpouring, protesters associated with a revived gilet jaunes (yellow-vest) movement could be out in force across France on Saturday.

The protest movement, which has attracted support from both the left and right, led huge disruptive demonstrations during Macron's first term in office.

A website associated with the group listed more than 500 planned demonstrations and 200 other actions on Saturday, and demanded that Macron resign.

The group said "we refuse to add our voices to the chorus of outrage" over the violence on 17 October and accused police of attacking protesters.

France is still reeling from last week's unrest, which saw police vastly outnumbered by protesters and rioters, shops looted and buildings torched - perhaps most emblematically, the ornate 19th-Century town hall in Limoges .

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said while visiting Limoges on Friday that the national government would pay for the building to be reconstructed "exactly as it was" rather than local taxpayers having to foot the bill.

Two men, including one already on a security watchlist, were charged by prosecutors over the fire on Saturday.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 232 people had been imprisoned for their role in the 17 October riots and more than 1,100 others had appeared in court as of Friday. Around 260 of those cases involves "charges of organised gang activity", he added.

Darmanin has ordered prosecutors to seek punitive measures against people convicted of looting or attacking police officers, including banning them from taking part in demonstrations, removing their right to vote and barring them from accessing social media.

The recent unrest has played out against a backdrop of a polarised political landscape and with France preparing for what could be the most divisive and unpredictable election period in a generation.

Macron will leave office next spring and polls suggest a candidate from his centrist movement could fail to make it through to a run-off vote in May.

That would likely leave French voters to choose between the hard-right National Rally and radical-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed).

Leading figures from both parties have levelled the blame for the disorder at Macron and his ministers, sensing fertile ground among the French public after a period in which his centrist party has struggled to form functioning governments and pass legislation.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader and presidential candidate of LFI, has criticised what he has framed as heavy-handed policing of demonstrations and accused Macron of "destroying the republican state" by imposing restrictions.

He has called on his supporters to join protests on Saturday, as he did the previous week, before condemning the rioting that followed.

A two-day National Rally conference in Orléans, around 120km (75 miles) to the south of Paris, could prove to be a flashpoint on Saturday.

Left-wing groups are expected to descend on the small city, where thousands of members of the hard-right party are set to gather to hear its leader Marine Le Pen speak.

This week, the city's mayor warned the numbers expected in Orléans were "unprecedented" and said thousands of police would be deployed to manage any clashes, adding that public transport would be suspended.

Opinion polls suggest Le Pen could have her strongest chance yet of becoming president as she runs for a fourth time, despite a court finding her guilty of embezzling EU funds earlier this year. She has denied committing any offence and is appealing the verdict.

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