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Red Scarves march against gilets jaunes' 'revolution'
More than 10,000 take to streets in protest against violence in gilets jaunes ' weekly demonstrations
A day after 4,000 gilets jaunes took to the streets of Paris, more than 10,000 so-called foulards rouges marched in the capital to protest against the violence that has troubled demonstrations over the past 11 weeks.
In Sunday's rival protest, the crowd - estimated by police at 10,500 - marched in the rain from the Place de la Nation to Place de la Bastille, some chanting "Yes to democracy, no to revolution" as they waved French and European Union flags.
Dubbed the foulards rouges, or "red scarf" movement, the secondary protest is the brainchild of an engineer from Toulouse who was horrified by the violence perpetrated by some gilets jaunes demonstrators.
Best of #FoulardsRouges #FoulardsBourges #LaCasteEstDansLaRue pic.twitter.com/4sMV2lLuVV
— Damien Bastian (@Damien_Bast) January 27, 2019
Placards proclaimed, mostly, polite messages - while the crowd shouted slogans including "Democracy!", "We are the people too", or "Thank you, police".
Just gonna leave this here...#nocaption #FoulardsRouges #MarcheRépublicaineDesLibertés #GiletsBleus #27janvier #GiletsJeunes pic.twitter.com/5KSAakktXy
— CE (@egbertconrad) January 27, 2019
Shortly after 5pm, the protest ended. Minutes later, Le Figaro reported, Place de la Bastille was almost empty.
As reported, on Saturday - 10 days after the launch of the nationwide Grand Débat - some 69,000 gilets jaunes came out across France in Acte 11 of their protest, with clashes erupting in Paris and Nantes. One prominent gilets jaunes protestor was reportedly hit in the eye by a rubber bullet while live-streaming one of Saturday's four marches in the capital.
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