More than 84,000 people took part in the protests in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Strasbourg, and other French cities on Saturday.

Clashes eventually erupted at the iconic Champs Ulysses and Arc de Triomphe, with police using tear gas and water cannons to calm the angry crowds, RT reports. In Paris alone, 156 people were arrested during the standoff, with most of them put in custody, the law enforcers said.

It’s surprising how easily the fuel tax protests from France could spread to Belgium and the Netherlands. The demonstrations of people in yellow vests signal a large dissatisfaction of the people over their governments.

France’s fuel protests have partly turned into anti-Macron protests as well. Under his leadership taxes are increased, but he forgets to protect the French people and their culture.

It’s the same for Belgium and the Netherlands. Their leaders lead their country like modern companies, making a profit is seen by them as a success.

But in the meantime some much more important issues are being ignored. An increasing number of people are worried about immigration, about poverty and about the future of their children.

French riot police (CRS) are alleged to have begun deploying assault rifles with live ammunition for the first time during the ninth weekend of protest in a row by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement.

French officers were caught on video brandishing what appeared to be Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles on the streets of the French capital near the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday, the Daily Mail reports.

LAST NOVEMBER, THE French started a new Saturday tradition: “Gilet jaune” protesters wearing yellow safety vests started to take to the streets by the tens of thousands in the morning, shouting slogans against the high cost of living, against French President Emmanuel Macron, and against his detested taxes and social service reforms.

By the afternoon, the protesters would clash with riot police, who would fire round after round of tear gas and flash grenades to disperse them. By dusk, protesters would break windows of bus stations and storefronts, and sometimes light cars on fire before fleeing when the cops came. And from the middle of the night into the morning, the other “gilets jaunes” — street cleaners, often immigrants, who also wear the safety vests — would clean up the mess.

Olivier Beziade suffered a “very serious brain injury” after being shot from behind by a police officer using a flash ball gun during the yellow vest demonstration in Bordeaux on Saturday. The father-of-three is currently in an induced coma in hospital, according to his family. A shocking video shows blood pouring from Mr Beziade’s head as he is treated by paramedics.

Mr Beziade’s wife Cindy told French media: “I’m furious. This is unacceptable. I won’t let it go. The pictures speak for themselves.

“The demonstration was calm until about 4.30pm. I was with my husband in Rue Sainte-Catherine.

“Then there was a bit of panic. We turned back to avoid teargas fumes and to go home. I turned first right, he took the first turning on the left.”

Mr Beziade was then shot by an officer with a flash ball gun, while another threw a stun grenade towards him.

Mrs Beziade added: “They shot at us like rabbits.”

Tear gas and baton charges were used by French police on thousands of Yellow Vest protestors threatening the Arc de Triomphe in Paris today during more mass anti-government demonstrations.

The ugly scenes came on the 9th Saturday in a row of violence that now routinely reduces the capital city to a war zone.

In Paris, epicentre of the fiery street clashes and vandalism that have made global headlines, 5,000 riot police were on hand, using tall barricades and armoured vehicles to lock down the central Place de la Concorde and surrounding districts.

Hundreds of officers were also on guard on the Champs-Elysees, where banks, jewellery stores and other shops had boarded up windows in anticipation of renewed looting and violence.

The Yellow Vest movement has taken to the streets across France for a 9th week of anti-government protests, as the Gilets Jaunes movement appeared to surge in both number and intensity. While the demonstrations were largely peaceful for most involved, there were several violent skirmishes with police.

The protesters called for French President Emmanuel Macron’s resignation, pelting police with rocks, bottles and other improvised projectiles, while authorities used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the protests which have been ongoing for nine weeks.

More than 200 people were arrested in Paris on Saturday in the ninth weekend of so-called "yellow vests" protests, which have been rocking the country since November.

Protesters called for French President Emmanuel Macron’s resignation and pelted police officers with bottles, improvised projectiles and flares, while officers responded with tear gas and water cannons.

Yellow Vest demonstrators returned to the streets of Paris and other French cities on Saturday, and some were met by police with tear gas and water cannons as the authorities pledged zero tolerance to violence.
More than 84,000 people took part in the protests in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Strasbourg, and other cities, according to Interior Ministry data.

Around 8,000 demonstrators, both locals and those coming from other parts of the country, were rallying in the French capital. Some 5,000 riot police with special equipment and armored vehicles oversaw the protests.

Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that “there is no alternative”, Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who “know best”.

President Emmanuel Macron’s New Year’s Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough

France is entering a period of turmoil. The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about.

Almost 200 people joined a protest against social disparities in Latvia, which took place in the center of the country's capital, a Sputnik correspondent reported Saturday.

The event was organized by the Latvian Russian Union and was attended by the union's co-Chairwoman, former member of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka and Miroslavs Mitrofanovs, a member of the European Parliament. Protesters gathered at the Dome Square and passed by the building of the country's parliament, the Sejm, heading to the Presidential Palace.

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The Brits seem to have fallen in love with the French Yellow Vest fashion, but unlike in France where many protesters lean left, the iconic symbol has been claimed by both sides of the UK debate.

The Yellow Vests ceased to be a uniquely French phenomenon after British protesters started donning the distinctive high-visibility jackets to make their own (very different) points. In the UK, an array of left-wing movements vowed to use the yellow vest during their protests in favor of bringing down the Tory government and abandoning austerity. RT’s Polly Boiko explains. But this is where the similarities between the French and British fashions end.

The Saturday rally comes ahead of a looming vote on PM May's Brexit deal in the House of Commons; the agreement has already been branded a failure and lost cause by cross-party politicians.

Hundreds of British anti-austerity protesters assembled in London on Saturday afternoon to demand an early general election, many of them spotting yellow vests.

The People's Assembly Against Austerity organised the protest in an attempt to express Brits' indignation towards the situation in parliament, sparked by UK Prime Minister Theresa May' Brexit deal. During the event, people were gathering under the slogan "Britain is Broken" before setting off toward parliament.

The Yellow Vests have reached critical mass. And the movement has now created the perfect storm for President Emmanuel Macron.

He can no longer ignore it, even though he tried to do so. And his lack of understanding of the situation as well as his open contempt for his opposition has placed him in a political vice.

Ignoring the problem will only make him look weaker and more disinterested. He could address the situation, put France first and step aside for new elections, which is the decent thing to do.

But, he’s chosen the predictable third option, crack down on the protesters in a futile show of strength. Authoritarians react to challenges like clockwork.

French Democracy Dead or Alive? Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived? Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that “there is no alternative”, Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who “know best”.

December 15, place de l’Opéra, Paris. Three yellow vests read out an address ‘to the French people and the president of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron’ saying: ‘This movement belongs to no one and to everyone. It gives voice to a people who for 40 years have been dispossessed of everything that enabled them to believe in their future and their greatness.’

The anger provoked by a fuel tax produced, within a month, a wider diagnosis of what ails society and democracy. Mass movements that bring together people with minimal organisation encourage rapid politicisation, which explains why ‘the people’ have discovered that they are ‘dispossessed of their future’ a year after electing as president a man who boasts he swept aside the two parties that alternated in power for 40 years.

Macron has come unstuck. As did previous wunderkinder just as young, smiling and modern: Laurent Fabius, Tony Blair, Matteo Renzi. The liberal bourgeoisie are hugely disappointed.

The riots were sparked by the German Chancellor’s arrival in Athens earlier today for talks with Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Mr Tsipras said the visit marked “the end of a difficult cycle between our two countries”.

Germany has been blamed by some Greeks for tough austerity measures imposed after the country required a series of bailouts following the 2008 financial crash.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is bracing for an awkward meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras today, with demonstrations over her visit banned in Athens.

The early XX century French monarchist philosopher, Charles Maurras, wrote: “The Republic is bad at governing but good at defending itself.” Seldom have these words seemed more true than during the Gilets Jaunes protests.
I live right in the heart of Paris, overlooking the Prime Minister’s office, Hôtel Matignon, and a short distance from the scenes of some of the violence witnessed last Saturday. Ever since the Yellow Vests started to demonstrate at the beginning of December, I have seen, just outside my own front door, the massive police presence defending the seat of government while leaving the rest of the city, and indeed the rest of the country, to the mercy of rioters.

Yellow Vest protesters are hoping to trigger a bank run with a nationwide coordinated cash withdrawal. By threatening the French financial system, protesters say, they want to peacefully force the government to pass their reforms.

“If the banks weaken, the state weakens immediately,” said Yellow Vest “sympathizer” Tahz San on Facebook. “It’s elected officials' worst nightmare.”

James Goddard, leader of the British Yellow Vests who challenged EU loyalist Anna Soubry on the street and branded her a fascist, has been purged from Facebook and PayPal.

Mr Goddard and a small knot of supporters recently approached the Tory MP and her staff near the Palace of Westminster and challenged her about campaigning to stop Britain from leaving the European Union, despite having claimed to accept the result of the 2016 referendum and acknowledging that “Brexit means Brexit” before her Leave-voting constituents re-elected her in 2017.

Ms Soubry complained she felt as though she was in “physical danger” as the boisterous group branded her a “fascist” and “Nazi” and was supported by dozens of fellow MPs in demanding police action against the protestors.

Activists from a French protest movement encouraged supporters Wednesday to set off a bank run by emptying their accounts, while the government urged citizens to express their discontent in a national debate instead of weekly demonstrations disrupting the streets of Paris.

Activists from the yellow vest movement, which started with protests over fuel tax increases, recommended the massive cash withdrawals on social media. One protester, Maxime Nicolle called it the “tax collector’s referendum.”

Marking up the Arc de Triomphe, smashing the face of the Marianne statue, a symbol of the French state, and trashing private property along the Champs-Elysees will be considered minor incidents if the Yellow Vests pull off their next move—an organized run on the banks.

According to activist Tahz San, the aim of the latest protest is to “scare this (French) state completely legally and without any violence, yet more effectively than ever expected.”

The Associated Press reports Gilets Jaunes activists “hope the move will force the government to listen to their demands, notably their call for more direct democracy through the implementation of popular votes that allow citizens to propose new laws.”

Instead of listening to the demands of a majority of the French people—polls show around 80% support for the movement—the state will roll out the military and pass a draconian law criminalizing organized protest.

France is signaling it's making preparations for a massive new crackdown on the gilets jaunes or "yellow vests" anti-government protests that have gripped the country for seven weeks. A new law under consideration could make any demonstration illegal to begin with if not previously approved by authorities, in an initiative already being compared to the pre-Maiden so-called "dictatorship law" in Ukraine.

In the name of reigning in the violence that has recently included torching structures along the prestigious Boulevard Saint Germain in Paris, and smashing through the gates of government ministry buildings, the French government appears set to enact something close to a martial law scenario prohibiting almost any protest and curtailing freedom of speech.

The Yellow Vests have reached critical mass. And the movement has now created the perfect storm for President Emmanuel Macron.

He can no longer ignore it, even though he tried to do so. And his lack of understanding of the situation as well as his open contempt for his opposition has placed him in a political vice.

Ignoring the problem will only make him look weaker and more disinterested. He could address the situation, put France first and step aside for new elections, which is the decent thing to do.

But, he’s chosen the predictable third option, crack down on the protesters in a futile show of strength. Authoritarians react to challenges like clockwork.

Disobedience is met with violence. More disobedience is met with more violence.

Within hours of the “Yellow Vest” protesters announcing a bank run in France, the Euro has begun to plunge sharply, already falling 0.23%.

With the proposed “bank run” idea already spreading to neighboring countries such as Italy and the UK, it appears that the effects may be strong. It is important to note that it appears that the alleged “bank run” has not even yet begun – it is only an idea being floated in social media and elsewhere – but it seems to already be shaking up the Euro markets.

Many in France have become disillusioned with their government, who they see as openly selling them to globalist interests, and with the EU in particular, who they feel is a tyrannical organization which is overriding the sovereignty of their nation.

Yellow vest activists are urging French citizens to empty their bank accounts and spark a massive run on French banks in their long-standing fight with the government.

Ahead of a ninth straight weekend of planned protests in Paris and across France, yellow vests are issuing calls on social media for massive cash withdrawals from banks.

Protesters hope the move will force the government to listen to their demands, notably their call for more direct democracy through the implementation of popular votes that allow citizens to propose new laws.

Activist Maxime Nicolle called it the “tax collector’s referendum.”

In a video message, Nicolle said “we are going to get our bread back ... You’re making money with our dough, and we’re fed up.”

The French government has announced plans to tighten laws on undeclared protests, in response to violent unrest from the Yellow Vest, or 'Gilet Jaunes', movement.

Civil unrest has broken out in France as a global economic downturn is just getting underway. The significance of this warning sign should not be underestimated.

The Yellow Vest Protests in France (les gilets jaunes) were never about a fuel tax. This was made clear when Macron caved in to their initial demands and cancelled it. Nor is this merely an expression of Macron’s unpopularity (though a 25% approval rating certainly doesn’t help). A deep undercurrent of discontent has been rising in western Europe, and the conditions which are fueling it are set to accelerate.

Thousands have taken to the streets in the Serbian capital of Belgrade late on Sunday to protest - for the fifth week in a row - the policies of the country's president, Aleksandar Vucic.

Demonstrators carried banners with the words, "We are the people," "Stop the treason, defend the constitution and back the people" and "down with the thieves" as loudspeakers played recordings of the president's ‘promises.'

Protesters are demanding electoral reform, better living conditions for retirees, public control over the distribution of wealth and various anti-corruption measures.

An estimated ten-thousand Hungarian protesters took the streets of Budapest this weekend denouncing the country's new labor code, which increases a workers’ allowable overtime from 250 to 400 hours a year, in a move that union leaders have dubbed the “slave law.”

Union workers claim that the law, proposed by Prime Minister Victor Orban's right-wing Fidesz party, seeks to increase Hungarian company profits at the expense of workers by adding an extra workday per week.

While some protested new courts that many have noted are easily manipulated by the PM, others attacked state-controlled media.

"The TV is lying," protesters yelled while others carried banners with the phrases "sweep away the regime" or "national strike," the Guardian reported.

The price of bread is, yet again, at the heart of protests in Sudan.

On Dec. 19, demonstrations began in the eastern city of Atbara after the government phased out wheat and fuel subsidies at the suggestion of international lenders. Before long, protests had turned deadly and spread to several towns and major cities including Omdurman and the capital Khartoum.

To quell the uprising, authorities disrupted internet connectivity, arrested opposition figures and critical journalists, and used tear gas to disperse growing crowds chanting, “The people want the fall of the regime.”

"Macron your goose is cooked, the chicks are in the street!"

That was the chant by one large contingent of women marching in the French city of Toulouse on Sunday as female-led demonstrations took place across France in order to keep the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron while also pushing back the increasing displays of violence some within the broader "Yellow Vest" (or Gilets Jaunes) movement argue is overshadowing the underlying political message.

"All the media ever reports is the violence, and we are forgetting the root of the problem" which is the fight against austerity, one protester named Karen, a 42-year-old nurse, told Agence France Presse on the streets of Marseilles.

Sunday's demonstrations followed a day of protests on Saturday during which violence broke out in Paris and other cities as those participating in "Act VIII" protests under the Yellow Vest banner clashed with French riot police, erected barricades, and started fires:

After the protests began peacefully, Paris police deployed teargas and batons as protesters began to riot during the so-called 'Act VIII" Day of Rage, while marches were underway in several other cities across France and London. Protesters in Paris hurled objects at riot police manning bridge barricades over the Seine river, while garbage bins were torched along the upscale Boulevard Saint Germain.

French authorities have arrested a key organizer of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement for leading an unauthorized demonstration, signaling a crackdown on the anti-government demonstrators after nearly two months of violence-filled protests.

Eric Drouet, a truck driver from the suburbs of Paris, was arrested in Paris on Wednesday evening near the iconic Champs-Élysées avenue - a prime location for the yellow vests to gather. Drouet was detained while leading a commemoration of yellow vests who have died since the movement's inception, most of whom were hit by cars during protests at roundabouts throughout the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Masked thugs broke into a French government ministry tonight - leading to the 'emergency evacuation' of government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux during a day of Yellow Vests rioting.

The 41-year-old, who is one of President Emmanuel Macron's most senior lieutenants, was rushed to safety by police during the drama.

Dramatic footage shows how a forklift taken from a nearby construction site was used to smash through the entrance of the building.

'Around fifteen masked people dressed in black broke into Mr Griveaux's office at about 4.30 on Saturday,' said an investigating source.

The Yellow Vest movement has become full of agitators who only want to “overthrow the government,” a spokesman for President Emmanuel Macron’s government said of the protests that gripped France since November.

Benjamin Griveaux made the comments following the government’s first Council of Ministers meeting of 2019 on Friday, as cabinet members returned from their two week Christmas break.

A group associated with Yellow Vests has written a fiery open letter to Emmanuel Macron, warning the French president against treating people like beggars, rejecting his nationwide debate, and demanding a major tax reduction.

The missive was posted in the Angry France group on Facebook, which unites almost 300,000 supporters of the Yellow Vest movement, and was also sent to the local media late on Thursday.

“Anger will turn into hatred if you continue, from your pedestal, you and your associates, to look at little people like beggars,” the protesters warned Macron.

The wave of so-called yellow vest protests — named after the obligatory attribute of French drivers — started in France in mid-November.

"Yellow Vest" protesters are demonstrating for the eighth week in a row in Paris on 5 January.

AFP has reported that the French police in Paris have started using tear gas against the "yellow vests", who began to throw bottles and stones at the guards.

In less than two months, the yellow vests (“gilets jaunes”) movement in France has reshaped the political landscape in Europe. For a seventh straight week, demonstrations continued across the country even after concessions from a cowed President Emmanuel Macron while inspiring a wave of similar gatherings in neighboring states like Belgium and the Netherlands. Just as el-Sisi’s dictatorship banned the sale of high-visibility vests to prevent copycat rallies in Egypt, corporate media has predictably worked overtime trying to demonize the spontaneous and mostly leaderless working class movement in the hopes it will not spread elsewhere.

In a return to the bad old days of McCarthyism, Bahia Amawi, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, lost her Texas elementary school job after refusing to pledge in writing that she would not participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Earlier this month, Amawi sued the school district that fired her.

The BDS movement against Israel has become a hot button issue in the closing month of 2018. A bipartisan group of senators tried to attach the Israel Anti-Boycott Act to the unanimous spending bill that Trump almost signed to avoid the current government shutdown. Meanwhile, Donorbox, a US software company, blocked the BDS fundraising account at the behest of a pro-Israel group.

“The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian – or McCarthyite – self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading,” Glenn Greenwald wrote at The Intercept.

More than 20 driverless vehicles in Arizona have reportedly been vandalized over the last two years, according to the New York Times, as enraged locals in the Waymo test market of Chandler have begun to revolt.

Tensions began to flare last year after an Arizona pedestrian was killed by a self-drivng Uber car, with residents slashing tires, throwing rocks at, pulling guns on, and trying to wreck the autonomous cars.

Despite the French government scrapping its planned fuel tax hike, the policy which initially sparked the Yellow Vests protests, the movement has already turned into a broader campaign against Paris' policies and rising living costs.

Sahra Wagenknecht, founder of the Aufstehen (Get Up) group uniting Germany's left-wing movement, has warned that the organisation's members will take to the streets in 2019, in a move that she said was inspired by the Yellow Vests protests in France.

"We have big plans […] not least because we recognise when people go on to the streets to protest – especially those who have not had a political voice for many years who rediscover their voice by protesting – then political change can happen. This is what we're seeing in France right now," she told reporters in Berlin.

Author and social commentator James Howard Kunstler is warning Americans to “be prepared” for civil disorder in 2019 which will arise out of a potential economic collapse.

Kunstler, who contributes to the The Atlantic Monthly, RollingStone and The New York Times Sunday Magazine, is forecasting civil unrest over the coming 12 months.

“Be prepared for it in 2019,” he writes. “There are going to be a lot of pissed-off people around the country. They are liable to attack Federal property and their fellow citizens (and their property). The hungrier they are, the worse it will be.”

Kunstler warns that before the year is out, “the US could find itself in a situation worse than the Great Depression” because the Federal Reserve will be forced to oversee a new round of quantitative easing in the second quarter of 2019, a policy that will cause the dollar to lose value “uncontrollably and catastrophically,” wiping out pension funds.

2018 was a year of victories by human rights activists despite heavy pressure, attacks and propaganda efforts by Israel and its lobby groups to whitewash its image.

Starting off the year, it was revealed that US President Donald Trump’s alliance with white supremacist groups and anti-Semitic figures has pushed support for Israel to a low point, especially among young American Jews.

By October, it was confirmed in another survey that support for Israel is coming primarily from Trump’s base, a hotbed of right-wing, white nationalist and Christian Zionist views, while support from other Americans continues to erode.

Early on in the year, AIPAC, Israel’s powerful lobby group on Capitol Hill, was forced to admit that it was facing mounting problems in its efforts to shore up support for Israel among progressive American leaders.

Around 25,000 people joined a rally against President Aleksandar Vucic in the Serbian capital on Saturday, according to AFP.

Demonstrators chanted “Vucic, thief” or waved placards that said “Enough lies!” while many blew whistles as a sign of protest.

“This is a citizen’s demonstration against the situation in the country, which has been economically and politically complicated, even critical, for a long time,” a protester, Vladimir Tosic, told AFP.

He stated that the latest protest “united normal Belgrade inhabitants who have come out to voice despair with the situation”.

Anti-government protesters turned out in Paris and other French cities for the seventh Saturday running, as activists called for direct democracy — to take power out of the hands of political elite — and protested against the mainstream media.

As in previous weeks, many protestors carried placards with the abbreviation ‘R.I.C.’ — “Citizens’ Initiative Referendum”, a demand for popular referendums that would be automatically triggered by any referendum calling for a change in government policy getting 700,000 signatures.

If enacted, the introduction of referendums triggered by the public rather than given as a gift by politicians would likely see a massive reorientation of political power in France away from the political elite and even traditional political parties, a clear desire of the Yellow Vest movement which has reacted strongly against Emmanuel Macron’s globalist government.

During the seventh consecutive weekend of yellow vest protests in Paris, a group of protesters can be seen taking down the EU flag.

The sources of the video, which surfaced yesterday, say it took place during Act VII (the seventh protest weekend).

When the flag is taken down people cheer and a French account that posted the video calls it “the flag of shame”.

Yellow vest protests took place all over France and one of the targets of the protesters was the mainstream media as it “spread fake news” about the size of the movement.

Around 25,000 protesters turned out for a fourth week of anti-government demonstrations in Belgrade, piling more pressure on the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vu?i?.

“This is a citizens’ demonstration against the situation in the country, which has been economically and politically complicated, even critical, for a long time,” protester Vladimir Toši? said at the rally on Saturday.

The demonstrators marched without incident or overt signs of political affiliation in the centre of the capital, with some chanting “Vu?i? thief”, or waving placards that said “Enough lies”.

Many blew whistles, a symbol of Serb protests since strongman Slobodan Miloševi? held power in the 1990s.

Dutch police on horseback broke up a protest on Saturday by “yellow vest” demonstrators who threw rocks and fireworks at them, a statement said.

The police statement said the mounted officers “carried out several charges” to end the demonstration in The Hague, which had not been approved by authorities and had turned violent. Eight protesters were detained for disturbing the peace after clashing with police.

Around 150-200 demonstrators took part in the protest march near government offices, wearing the hi-vis jackets also worn by anti-government protesters in France.

Dutch TV showed footage of the protesters in front of parliament waving Dutch flags, shouting anti-government slogans and later trying to break through a police cordon. Several mounted police and dozens of officers on foot could be seen. No one sustained any injuries, police said.