May Day demonstrations held across Europe to honor workers and call for peace – National | The Canadian News

Citizens and unions from cities across Europe took to the streets on Sunday for May Day marches and sent messages of protest to their governments, especially in France, where the holiday honoring workers was used as a rallying cry against the newly re-elected President Emmanuel. Macron.

May Day is a time of great emotion for the participants and their causes, with the police at the ready.

Turkish police moved quickly in Istanbul and surrounded protesters near Taksim Square, where 34 people were killed in 1977 during a May Day event when shots were fired into the crowd from a nearby building.

On Sunday, police detained 164 people for demonstrating without permits and resisting police in the square, the Istanbul governor’s office said. At one site on the Asian side of Istanbul, a May Day gathering drew thousands, chanting, chanting and waving banners, a rally organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey.

In Italy, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, an open-air mega-concert has been scheduled for Rome with rallies and protests in cities across the country. In addition to work, peace was an underlying theme with calls to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Italy’s three main unions were massing their main rally in the hilltop city of Assisi, a frequent destination for peace protests. This year’s motto is “Working for Peace”.

“It is a May Day of social and civil commitment for peace and work”, said the leader of the Italian CISL union, Daniela Fumarola.

Protests were planned across Europe, including in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where students and others planned to demonstrate in support of Ukraine while communist, anarchist and anti-European Union groups held their own meetings.

In France, the May Day demonstrations, a week after the presidential election, are aimed at showing Macron the opposition he could face in his second five-year term and take power against his centrists before legislative elections in June. . Opposition parties, particularly the far left and far right, seek to break the majority of his government.

Protests were planned across France with a focus on Paris, where the communist-backed CGT union was leading the main march through eastern Paris, along with a handful of other unions. Everyone is pressing Macron for policies that put people first and condemning his plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65.

At first, far-right leader Marine Le Pen was absent from her party’s traditional floral offering at the foot of a statue of Joan of Arc, replaced by the interim president of her National Rally party. Le Pen was defeated by Macron in the second round of last Sunday’s presidential election and plans to campaign to keep her seat as lawmaker.

“I have come to tell the French that the vote is not over. There is a third round, the legislative elections,” said Jordan Bardella, “and it would be incredible to leave all power to Emmanuel Macron.”

Nicole Winfield in Rome and Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul contributed to this report.