150,000 police on duty across France on New Year Eve to handle 'yellow vest' protesters

Some 150,000 police forces are set to be on duty across France on New Year’s Eve as “yellow vest” demonstrators have already called for yet another round of anti-government protest rallies in the European country.  

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday is also set to make a televised address to the country at 8:00 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), at the same time as yellow vests have been called to mass on the Champs-Elysees avenue in the French capital.

Paris, in particular, will be on full alert after frequent clashes over the last month between anti-riot police forces and the so-called yellow vest demonstrators.

Since November 17, thousands of demonstrators wearing yellow vests have been gathering in major French cities to initially protest Macron’s controversial fuel tax hike — which he later dropped — and the high costs of living in France.

However, the protest movement has diminished dramatically in the last fortnight, yet the prospect of protesters in yellow vests mixing with revelers and tourists in the capital will cause a new headache for the stretched Paris police force.

PressTV-'Yellow Vests' head for French TV stations, protest bias

"Yellow Vest" demonstrators in France have taken to the streets for a seventh consecutive week.

Analysts believe that the tax and salary concessions that Macron offered to the yellow vest protesters earlier this month have brought the recent fall.

But according to numerous polls conducted after Macron canceled his planned fuel-tax hike on December 10, about half of the public believes his concessions were not meaningful enough and that the movement should continue.

“What can we expect? Disorder. What I see with the 'yellow vests' is a desire to be harmful, not to demonstrate,” said French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner as he visited a fire station in the capital.

The planned “non-violent and festive” demonstration to be held on Monday night has been organized on Facebook, where some 9,000 people have already indicated they plan to attend, less than the 12,000 police who will be on duty in the capital.

PressTV-Macron calls for order after yellow vest attack on police

President Macron has called for order after a sixth weekend of "yellow vest" anti-government protests and a violent attack on police in Paris.

The European country is currently on high alert due to the threat of terrorism, with the latest attack conducted on December 11 during which five people lost their lives by the bullets of a gunman at a Christmas market in Strasbourg.

Furthermore, in New Year's Eve lots of French youths from poverty-hit districts of France set fire to hundreds of cars across France in what has become a shocking annual tradition that ties up police forces.

The French president’s New Year’s address is hotly anticipated by political commentators who expect 41-year-old Macron to address the “yellow vest” protests which commenced in rural France.

Since the onset of the movement, ten people have been killed and more than 1,500 have been injured. Fifty of the injury cases were serious. Thousands more have been arrested by security forces.

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