{"id":240804,"date":"2021-08-15T07:29:54","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T07:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=240804"},"modified":"2021-08-17T06:49:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T06:49:20","slug":"fifth-consecutive-weekend-of-protests-in-france-over-covid-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=240804","title":{"rendered":"Fifth consecutive weekend of protests in France over Covid pass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim Willsher \u2013 The Guardian Aug 14, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Protesters took to the streets of France<\/a> for the fifth consecutive Saturday to oppose the country\u2019s pass sanitaire \u2013 <\/em>health pass \u2013 now required for everyday activities.<\/p>\n

More than 250,000 people were expected at about 200 demonstrations, an increase in the number that officials said had turned out last week<\/a>. Protesters have accused the government of underestimating the numbers and playing down support.<\/p>\n

The protesters are opposed to the government\u2019s decision to make the <\/a>pass sanitaire <\/a><\/em>obligatory<\/a> for restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres and most public buildings apart from shops. They accuse the government of infringing their civil and personal liberties. A number are also opposed to the vaccination of children; France has been vaccinating the 12-17 age group since May.<\/p>\n

To obtain a health pass, individuals must be fully vaccinated, have a recent negative Covid-19 test or have had the coronavirus in the past.<\/p>\n

Protests in France are unusual in August, when many families are away, especially around the 15th of the month, which is an important public holiday.<\/p>\n

President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s decision to make the pass obligatory for those wishing to return to a more normal life is aimed at coercing the population to get vaccinated<\/a>. Ministers hope it will also avoid a return to harsher restrictions including lockdowns and curfews.<\/p>\n

So far an estimated 46 million French people \u2013 66.8% \u2013 have had at least one vaccination and just under 39 million are fully vaccinated. The country is on track to reach its target of 50 million people vaccinated at least once by the end of the month.<\/p>\n

France is currently delivering 240,000 first jabs a day \u2013 compared with about 36,000 a day in the UK.<\/p>\n

The anti-pass movement appears to be strongest in the south of the country, where there are also the lowest rates of vaccination. The protests have united the far right and hard left as well as a wide number of people in between including conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, the gilets jaunes and those politically opposed to Macron and centrist government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am for the vaccine and had it months ago, but not the health pass, which is discriminatory,\u201d one protester said.<\/p>\n

In Paris there were three separate marches, including one led by Florian Philippot, a former adviser to far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who left her party in 2017 and now heads his own called Les Patriotes. All were heavily policed. There were also demonstrations in Lyon, Toulon, Montpellier, Nice, Marseille and Perpignan.<\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands were expected to participate in the fifth consecutive Saturday protest against the health pass <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":239348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-france"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240805,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240804\/revisions\/240805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/239348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}