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Man dies after Facebook-organised street party

A 21-year-old Frenchman died on Thursday night after attending a giant street party organised via the Facebook social networking site. The death has sparked calls for government action to curb the new trend known as apéro géants, in which thousands of people gather to drink and party in public spaces.

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Up to 10,000 people attended the party, in the west-coast city of Nantes. Many of them were minors, according to the authorities, and 41 people were arrested for various offences related to drugs, drunkenness and violent behaviour.

The dead man, a stonemason who has not been named, fell five metres from a bridge, landing on his head and suffering damage to his skull and thorax.

Nantes mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault is calling on the government to start a debate on how to deal with apéro géants. Another took place on Thursday night in the southern university city of Montpellier, with an estimated 10,000 attending with 29 arrests and ten hospitalisations.

“This is a national problem which has to be handled at national level,” Ayrault told RFI. “I am calling on the Interior Minister to organise a roundtable because we have to face facts and see how to roll back this phenomenon. We should tell the organisers of this sort of event straight – they are taking on a heavy responsibility, they’re putting people’s lives in danger.”

Nantes’s first such street party took place in 1999 and saw 50 people so drunk that they went into coma, while others fell into the river Loire.

The mass public drinking sessions, which are tarnishing French people’s reputation for handling strong drink well, are new in France, although not in neighbouring Spain, where they are known as botellons.

Another is being organised on Paris’s Champ de Mars on 23 May.

 

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