Manifestation

Saturday, the "Balai Citoyen" wanted to have a sit-in in front of the central town hall to protest the mayor's [alleged?] mismanagement of the city and promised construction projects. I asked Amadou if we could go see it, but he said it wasn't a good idea. Nonetheless, he brought me as close as he thought would be safe, just in time to see a cloud up ahead, and people sprinting away from it as quickly as possible. Tear gas.

It turns out the sit-in, which technically hadn't received approval, was dispered by officers of the CRS (which is basically like the Riot police), and they seem to have cut to the chase by unloading some canisters of tear gas into the crowd of protesters. You can see a few of them blocking off roads leading to the central town hall here. I didn't dare take obvious pictures of them, because no police like pictures as far as I'm aware.

So they weren't even allowed to protest. If you are interested, you can read more about the protest and what happened here . It's in French, but there are also more pictures.