December 6, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 20, 1422

RENNES (France), Dec 5: An unprecedented protest movement by French gendarmes spread on Wednesday, as thousands of officers in towns around the country staged demonstrations for improved pay and conditions.

In the biggest demonstration to date since the movement started on Tuesday, more than 1,000 gendarmes from across Brittany demonstrated in the courtyard of barracks at Rennes.

Many of them arrived by speeding across town in a convoy of gendarmerie cars, vans and motorcycles, lights flashing, sirens wailing and ignoring the traffic lights as they went.

In the western town of Nantes around 700 officers from the region wore uniforms but removed their peaked caps as they demonstrated in the courtyard of the barracks there.

Spokesman Pascal Plaut, of the gendarmerie’s surveillance and intervention patrol at Fontenay-le-Comte in the Vendee, said the gendarmes were “depressed” and “weary” about their pay and working conditions.

“There is a deep malaise, people have had enough,” he said.

Some gendarmes demonstrated in a more subtle fashion, using sometimes devious ways of circumventing a ban under their military status on them protesting in public.

In the northern town of Amiens, around 300 gendarmes made their point by going in their police cars to ask for a rendez-vous with the gendarmerie’s doctor.

In Tulle in central France, 400 gendarmes protested by handing in peaked caps to a local museum near to the place where President Jacques Chirac and his wife have a residence.

Protests also took place in the central town of Orleans, Pau and Tarbes in the southwest and on the island of Corsica, followed a demonstration in the southern city of Montpellier on Tuesday, described by participants as “historic,” as it was the first time gendarmes had staged an action publicly and in uniform.

The demonstrations follow a month of protests by French police, defused at the weekend after unions agreed to terms from the interior ministry offering pay increases, personal body armour and an action plan to improve their security.

Gendarmes said they now wanted the police deal extended to them.

France’s 90,000 gendarmes perform police duties outside major cities, but are technically employees of the ministry of defence. Until now their only means of protest has been to send their spouses to join police demonstrations.

Defence Minister Alain Richard condemned the action on Tuesday, saying during parliamentary question time local initiatives of this kind were “incompatible” with the gendarmes’ role.

Richard has promised to create several hundred new posts, but gendarmes say the offer is insufficient and they also want more pay and days off.—AFP