Fury at President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to bypass parliament on pension reform has sparked days of unrest across the country, reviving scrutiny of police’s heavy-handed tactics and leaving French cities shrouded in tear gas and smoke – with no end in sight to an increasingly bitter standoff

TL;DR

The unrest – which began last Thursday after Macron used special executive powers to ram his pension reform through parliament – has seen security forces fight running battles with protesters late into the night even as firefighters race to extinguish hundreds of blazes. The unrest has revived a longstanding debate on police brutality in France, and once again highlighted the lack of checks on law enforcement in a country where the minister in charge of police oversight is commonly referred to as “France’s top cop”. “This crisis stems from a lack of political compromise and the solution cannot come from the police,” said Roché

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