More than 50 politicians and campaigners have been assaulted during the French election, the interior minister said Friday, as tension mounts ahead of this weekend\u2019s run-off votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis campaign is short and yet we already have 51 candidates, substitutes and activists who have been physically assaulted,\u201d Gerard Darmanin told BFMTV.
\nMore than 30 people have been arrested, he said, including militants from far-right and far-left groups.
\nLast month, President Emmanuel Macron made the gamble of calling parliamentary elections just weeks before Paris hosts the Olympics, after the far right trounced his centrist alliance in European elections.
\nTensions have risen in France after the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic National Rally (RN) party came out ahead after the first round of voting, outright winning 39 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly and predicted to gain many more.
\nSeveral assaults have been reported as centrists and a new left-wing alliance make last ditch efforts to ensure the RN does not win an absolute majority in the second round.
\nFour people, including three minors, were detained over attacking government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team on Wednesday while they were sticking up campaign posters in Meudon outside Paris, prosecutors said.
\nThevenot, who is of Mauritian origin, was not harmed but a colleague and a supporter were wounded and taken to hospital after the attack by around 20 people.
\nDarmanin said 30,000 police would be deployed on Sunday to secure the vote, including 5,000 in Paris and its suburbs.
\nThe Paris Bar Council has asked the public prosecutor\u2019s office to open a case after a far-right website called for the \u201celimination\u201d of lawyers who had signed an article against the RN.
\n\u201cViolence and intimidation have no place in our society,\u201d Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wrote in a social media post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 50 politicians and campaigners have been assaulted during the French election, the interior minister said Friday, as tension mounts ahead of this weekend\u2019s run-off votes. \u201cThis campaign is short and yet we already have 51 candidates, substitutes and activists who have been physically assaulted,\u201d Gerard Darmanin told BFMTV. More than 30 people have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26931,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26929\/revisions\/26931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}