French Yellow Vests Protest for 16th Weekend as Organizers Say ‘Macron Is not Responding’

Anti-government protesters rally in France for the sixteenth consecutive week of demonstrations to show they are still mobilized against President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies they see as favoring the rich.

More than 5,000 people took part in the protests across France on Saturday with some 1,300 of them having participated in the rally in the capital Paris, according to French news broadcaster BFMTV.

Police detained nine people in Paris during the protests, according to Press TV.

 Organizers say they want to keep pressure on the government as a two-month “grand debate” initiates by Macron to let ordinary people express their views on the country’s economic and democratic issues is ending this month.

Sophie Tissier, a coordinator of the Paris protest, told The Associated Press that “we keep protesting every Saturday because Macron doesn’t respond at all to the yellow vests’ demands. We want to rebuild our democracy and change today’s political system.”

“Macron is contemptuous and … does not even try to understand that there are people that are living in great poverty and precariousness, and that there are so many inequalities,” she added.

France’s major cities of Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and others have also been the scene of fresh anti-government protests on Saturday.

In the city of Nantes, police fired tear gas against protesters to disperse them.

Thousands have been arrested and at least ten people have been killed since the protests started in November.

Hundreds more have also been wounded. The demonstrations began against the government’s planned fuel tax hikes. President Macron dropped the plan in the face of the protests.

However, anti-government demonstrations continued and turned into a nationwide call for the president to resign. Protesters blame Macron’s economic policies for the hardships they’re facing.

Macron on Friday renewed a call for calm, denouncing what he called the “intolerable” violence that has resulted from the weeks of protests.

H.M