France meets second weekend of mass protests with 70,000 police, arrests 1,314

Tehran Times · 2026-10-25 16:59 UTC

TEHRAN — French police arrested 1,314 people and sealed off city centers on Saturday as hundreds of thousands marched for a second consecutive weekend. Rather than addressing the root causes of the nationwide unrest, the government focused entirely on silencing the demonstrators through state repression.

TEHRAN — French police arrested 1,314 people and sealed off city centers on Saturday as hundreds of thousands marched for a second consecutive weekend. Rather than addressing the root causes of the nationwide unrest, the government focused entirely on silencing the demonstrators through state repression.

The Interior Ministry initially said nearly 1,000 people had been detained, then raised the figure to 1,314, along with 75 fires and 24 looted shops.

It counted 410,000 marchers nationwide, 110,000 of them in Paris. Unions and activists say the real turnout was close to double. Whichever number is right, the crowds held steady against a deployment of 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, 20 percent more than a week earlier, backed by SWAT units, helicopters, armored vehicles and water cannon. Shopkeepers boarded up. Museums closed.

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