Paris, Thursday.
HUNDREDS of fishermen wielding clubs and firing flares ransacked the
wholesale Paris fish market and blockaded Calais with trawlers today to
demand protection from cheap fish imports.
Over 20 people were hurt as the protesters, infuriated by dwindling
income and disappointed by an emergency aid package, swept across
northern France, attacking supermarkets and throwing tons of fish into
the street.
To appease them before Prime Minister Edouard Balladur visits Brittany
tomorrow, the government ordered Customs officers to reinforce border
controls on fish imports.
The Calais harbour blockade disrupted ferry services to Britain, which
had protested to France earlier in the day about the destruction of a
consignment of British fish.
Police said about 600 fishermen from Brittany, centre of a widening
five-day-old fishing strike, descended on the Rungis market, south of
Paris, before dawn.
They burst through a police cordon and a teargas barrage, destroyed
some 60 tons of fish and overturned police cars.
Eighteen policemen were slightly injured during the hour-long clashes,
police said. Demonstrators said a fisherman suffered a fractured skull
and another was injured in the eye.
''We've got mouths to feed. Our jobs are at stake,'' one fisherman
told market workers who sought to stop him.
''We've got our own problems,' retorted an employee at the market,
which was hit by a similar protest last year. 'Nobody is earning gold
today. I've got no fish for my customers tomorrow.'
Officials said 10 trawlers began blockading Calais today and fishermen
also set up a roadblock at the ferry terminal, searching lorries
suspected of importing fish.
''We've had to divert ferries from Dover. Two ferries of the P&O
company have been sent to Zeebrugge. We've also got another P&O ferry
stranded in the port unable to get out,'' an official said.
Other demonstrators attacked two hypermarkets and a frozen food
warehouse in Calais and Boulogne. A fisherman was hurt in Boulogne as
riot police responded with volleys of teargas.
In Cherbourg, fishermen vandalised a Scottish trawler's cargo, pouring
fuel on 20 tons of mackerel, a harbour official said. They also
destroyed tons of imported and French fish in the Brittany town of
Plerin.
Scots Fisheries Minister Sir Hector Monro condemned the violence as
unacceptable and unjustifiable.--Reuter.
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