A Sud-Rail activist suffered serious eye injuries during a demonstration in Paris on Thursday.

This should greatly fuel the discussion about police violence in connection with the escalation of the conflict over pension reform. A Sud-Rail railway worker union activist suffered a serious eye injury during a demonstration Thursday in Paris against pension reform, his union said Friday, including a delegate who said the railway worker would have lost his sight.

“The surgeon told him that he would no longer see with his left eye,” Christophe Huguet, a Sud-Rail delegate at the Sud-Est Européen Technical Center in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, where his colleague works, said on Friday evening.

“He had surgery last night and this afternoon we received a message written by him through his family,” a union spokesman said. “It happened in Paris, at the head of the procession, just before arriving at the Opéra. We think he got a grenade burst to get out of the encirclement, but we don’t know for sure yet,” added Mr. Hyuge, who himself was present at the demonstration.

Sud-Rail condemns ‘explosion of police violence’

Earlier in the day, the union condemned in a press release the “explosion of police violence”. “We are warning the government of its strategy of suppressing the social movement in an attempt to silence it,” it says. “In Paris, several SUD-Rail activists were subjected to completely uncontrolled and uncontrolled police attacks,” the union denounces, citing the case of this railroad worker and another “beaten” with “opened skull”.

“This violence during demonstrations must stop immediately,” says SUD-Rail, calling on “all railway workers and railroad workers to step up the movement in protest and solidarity.”