French and Turkish protesters clash in demo crash

Reuters AlertNet, UK
March 18 2006

Source: Reuters

LYON, France, March 18 (Reuters) – French youths protesting against
a new employment law ended up in an unexpected clash with Turks
demonstrating against an Armenian memorial when their separate marches
crossed paths in this eastern city on Saturday.

Riot police used water cannon to separate the two groups after
about 2,500 Turks opposed to the construction of a memorial in the
city centre to Armenian victims of a 1915 massacre attacked the
demonstrating youths, police said.

The Turks, waving Turkish flags and holding up posters saying “There
was no Armenian genocide,” reacted after youths denounced them as
“fascists” and yelled “go home!”, police said.

Both sides pelted each other with missiles and engaged in fist fights,
they said, adding that some youths protesting the employment law were
apparently of Armenian origin.

Turkey rejects charges that it massacred 1.5 million Armenians living
in the then Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Many of the survivors fled to France, which now has an influential
Armenian minority of about 300,000. After a long campaign by them,
the French parliament passed a bill in 1998 officially recognising
the killing as genocide.

The protest against the new employment law was one of many marches
across France on Saturday aimed at putting pressure on the Paris
government to withdraw the measure that allows employers to fire
workers under 26 more easily.

The conservative government introduced the law to encourage reluctant
employers to take on new staff and help combat unemployment, which
among young people is double the national average of 9.6 percent.