Alwaght- France is now faced with increasingly an uprising by rioting workers amid increased police brutality with fears that similar riots will spread across Europe.
Amid all the scuffles, the striking and the disruption of the French anti-labor demonstrations, a video has emerged of a woman being brutally roughed up by a police officer.
The video, said to have been shot in Tolouse on Thursday, starts somewhere in the middle of what looked like an ongoing situation, and depicts a disproportionate use of force towards a woman, who was already visibly distraught.
The policeman in riot gear manhandled her, before pushing her back with such force that she ends up falling onto her back and slams into a railing.
France has been gripped by a wave of protests since the government first announced and then signed into order a labor reform bill, which gives companies more freedom to decide their employees’ fates. The rallies have frequently descended into violence, and hundreds of protesters and police have been injured.
This week strikes over labor reforms have left fuel in short supply in France. Riot police removed workers blockading oil depots at all but one center, in order to ease shortages.
However, six out of eight refineries have been disrupted, meaning the country has dipped into its strategic reserves.
With the tourist season set to begin, France which receives almost 83 million visitors is facing riots, shutdowns and near civil war. France’s labor wars may spread across Europe as the Euro-left sees new ways of opposing the strengthening right. Economic woes will accelerate this process.
Early May, President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls decided to use their constitutional powers to impose the labor law reforms by decree.
Hardline trade unions and a bloc of traditionalist Socialist politicians – including several former ministers and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo – oppose the changes. So do 70 per cent of French people.
Known as the El Khomri law, after the labor minister, the legislation has given birth to an entire protest movement, Nuit Debout, which has been likened to Occupy in the US, but enjoys broader support in France.
