Rallies against Le Pen draw more than a million people

PARIS -- Well over a million people across France marched against extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on Wednesday, just four days before he faces President Jacques Chirac in a race that has mobilized the country.

The marches on the traditional labor holiday of May Day were the culmination of nearly two weeks of public protests following Le Pen's stunning showing in the presidential election's first round.

The largest march was in eastern Paris, centered around the Place de la Bastille, site of the revolutionary-era prison that is a symbol of French democracy.

At least 400,000 people of all ages and classes of society chanted anti-Le Pen slogans, held up banners, played instruments or beat drums to reggae beats.

Elsewhere in France, more than 900,000 others marched in a dozen cities, including Grenoble, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although 12 people were taken into police custody for allegedly having weapons and other minor infractions, authorities said.

"Le Pen is a danger to liberty. We just have to block him," said Francois Taquet, 48, of Saint Ouen near Paris.

Didier Hughes, 56, an economist, called Le Pen "a fascist, and so dangerous for France that we all must unite."

"I've not seen this kind of atmosphere on the streets for 30 years," he added.

The anti-Le Pen rallies came after the far-right leader held a much smaller demonstration in Paris to honor his party's heroine, Joan of Arc.

In an annual May Day event that took on added importance this year because of Le Pen's surprise showing, he placed a bouquet of white flowers at a gilded statue of Joan of Arc riding a horse and waving the national flag. For Le Pen's National Front party, the 15th-century peasant girl who led a series of victories against the English is a symbol of French resistance against foreign "invaders."

In a speech, Le Pen promised an "electoral earthquake" in the election's final round, which Chirac is expected to win easily.

"The ground's going to crumble under their feet," he said.

Police and observers estimated the pro-Le Pen crowd at 10,000 to 12,000 people, though Le Pen's party claimed there were as many as 100,000 marchers.

Wednesday, a sunny day in Paris and a national holiday, was the climax of snowballing protests against Le Pen. Last week, in the previous highest turnout, about 350,000 people protested across the nation.

Some 3,500 police, from riot police to plainclothes officers, were deployed in Paris alone.

At the Bastille, good-natured crowds shouting, "Down with Le Pen!" packed the square and surrounding side streets. A few people handed out sing-along lyrics mocking the far-right leader.

Thousands carried signs calling Le Pen and his National Front party "Nazis." Many signs were emblazoned with the swastika, and some showed Le Pen with a narrow mustache drawn in, to resemble Adolf Hitler.

"Down with the National Front -- N as in Nazi, F as in fascist," protesters chanted.

Some held up posters of Martin Luther King with the caption: "Don't Break His Dream."

One demonstrator, 20-year-old Abdoul Fofana, said, "If Le Pen wins there will be a world war in France." Fofana, who came to France from the Ivory Coast 10 years ago, was worried about Le Pen's fiercely anti-immigrant stance.

Some of the protests were combined with traditional May Day labor protests by unions. In Paris, 1,000 marchers from a labor union headed toward the center of town, protesting Le Pen, capitalism and fascism.

A few May Day protests elsewhere in Europe made reference to Le Pen. Dieter Scholz, a German labor union official, drew applause at a rally of about 10,000 people in front of Berlin City Hall when he said: "Whoever preaches hate and xenophobia has no place in this city, in Germany or in Europe. That is why we declare solidarity with French unions in the campaign against Le Pen."

At the pro-Le Pen demonstration in Paris, Maurice Dumontot, a 58-year-old retired police brigadier, admitted that "Le Pen is the unloved candidate."

"But he's our only chance to put things in order to stop all the crime and have people respect our laws," he said.

A few people showed their anger at Le Pen's parade. One family, standing on a balcony above the marchers, hung out a banner that read, simply, "No."

On a bridge over the Seine, about 1,000 people honored the memory of a Moroccan man who was drowned by National Front supporters during a rally on May 1, 1995. A group of skinheads at the rally pushed the man, Brahim Bouarram, off the bridge.

Le Pen has been convicted of racism or anti-Semitism five times. He blames immigration, particularly from Muslim North Africa, for unemployment -- which edged up in March to 9.1 percent -- and for rising crime. His success in the April 21 first round of elections stunned France and most of its allies and neighbors.

The far-right leader wants to pull France out of the European Union and return to the franc, the currency abandoned in favor of the euro at the start of this year, as well as deport all illegal immigrants and tighten border controls.