Nearly 90,000 students, staff and parents took to the streets of towns and cities across France, as protesters blockaded hundreds of secondary schools during a nationwide day of action against extended school hours, teacher shortages and crumbling classrooms. UNN reports, citing The Guardian.
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France’s Interior Ministry said 86,000 people took part in marches in cities including Marseille, Nantes and Lyon on Tuesday morning, 6 October, while as many as 40,000 people are expected to join the largest demonstration in Paris later that day.
The demonstrations follow two weeks of protests that began in the northern suburbs of the French capital and then spread across the country. They have been marred by frequent and often violent clashes with police, in which hundreds of people have been injured, some seriously.
Although many protests were peaceful, some demonstrators set fire to rubbish bins, vandalised bus stops and threw objects at police, who responded with batons, tear gas and riot-control projectiles. According to the Education Ministry, 24 schools have been burned or looted since the protests began.
According to the government, at least 715 police officers and 215 teenagers have been injured, while 6,100 people have been detained, nearly all of them minors. More than 1,800 people are facing criminal proceedings, 1,483 of them under the age of 18, the Justice Ministry said.
The National Union of Lyceum Students said that 1,800 of the country’s 3,700 secondary schools were blockaded or closed for the day on Tuesday, 6 October, although some local education authorities tried to move classes online.
Students on the marches held smoke flares and placards bearing slogans including "Beneath our textbooks lies anger" – a reference to the famous slogan from the student unrest of May 1968, "Beneath the paving stones, the beach" – and "Schools without money = a country without a future".
Many teachers also took part in the demonstration, the publication writes.
Trade union activists were also present at the marches, while CGT union leader Sophie Binet urged members to "stand up for upper-secondary students". Green Party leader Marine Tondelier called on local officials and parents to wear white and "go and protect our children during the demonstrations".
Trade unions and human rights organisations accused police of using excessive force against young protesters, while Amnesty International said the French authorities must "put an end to the disproportionate police repression witnessed in recent days".
On Monday, a 15-year-old had his arm torn off during a clash between protesters and police in northern France.
A 16-year-old lost his sight in his right eye after suffering a serious head injury on Wednesday during a blockade of a secondary school in Tours. Local prosecutor Catherine Sorita-Minard said the injury was "consistent with the impact of a defensive projectile known as a blast ball".
In another incident, a 14-year-old lost most of his teeth on Monday when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him from close range during a protest northwest of Paris. "His jaw is clamped shut, he can no longer speak and he eats through a straw," his mother told reporters.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ordered his ministers to address the students’ main demands, including providing replacements for absent teachers, reviewing the length of the school day from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and repairing ageing buildings.
However, the protests, seven months before a decisive presidential election that will determine Emmanuel Macron’s successor, have increased pressure on the government as it seeks to reduce the growing budget deficit amid rising investor concerns over France’s huge debt and weak economic growth.
The government accused the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFA) party of encouraging and even organizing the movement after numerous LFA lawmakers took part in blockading schools. Party veteran and presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon strongly supported the protests, calling for nonviolence, the publication writes.