French Students Set Fires, Erect Blockades as Police Detain Hundreds at High Schools

Violence spreads in schools

French students set fire to bins and erected blockades outside schools in several cities as they protested overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and crumbling facilities.

Police detained hundreds of protesters at the lycees, which students aged 15 to 18 attend for their final three years of secondary education in France, and local authorities said teachers were inadvertently splashed as a student attempted to throw petrol into a rubbish bin at Marseille’s Victor Hugo high school.

Al Jazeera

At another school in the city, Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people surrounded a firetruck that had arrived to put out a blaze in the morning, police said, and the attackers forced the firefighters to flee the vehicle, then set it alight.

In Strasbourg, trams were halted to “restrict the movements of rioters and demonstrators”, and students burned barriers on tram tracks, authorities said.

Raphael, a 17-year-old who withheld his surname for fear of reprisals, told the AFP news agency outside a protest in Strasbourg, “There are 35 of us per classroom. With 35 degrees Celsius [95 degrees Fahrenheit] in summer, it’s unbearable.”

SourcesAl Jazeera

Arrests, injuries, and “act two”

The Ministry of the Interior said the movement affected 356 establishments across France on Wednesday, compared with 338 on Tuesday, as students demanded replacements of teachers and more resources. Édouard Geffray said the balance sheet announced on Wednesday recorded 119 students and staff injured since the start of the blockades, and the IGPN had been handed three investigations after high school students were injured during blockades. Laurent Nuñez said security forces intervened “with a lot of proportionality,” and the prosecutor said a young man’s injuries in Tours were “compatible” with a LBD shot.

Ryad Rani called during a joint press conference in Paris with the Student Union for a “second act” asserting common demands, and he and Eloïse Lefebvre-Milon said they were calling “all trade unions, associations and political groups to join them in the mobilization” on Thursday and Tuesday, October 6. Sophie Binet, general secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail, told Franceinfo that “violence undermines mobilization” of students, while she said the strategy of the French government “has led to this violence.”

BBC

SourcesBFMDemócrata

Politics and budget pressure

Reuters said France’s intelligence agencies briefed a government crisis meeting on Thursday that the wave of student protests was initiated by hard-left politicians, with a readout stating an “operation organised by LFI (France Unbowed) and its proxies on the far left.” RLFI lawmaker Louis Boyard rejected the charge after the meeting readout was shared with reporters, saying, “LFI has always advocated non-violent demonstrations,” and he added that “This sense of frustration will not be dealt with through batons.” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office held a crisis meeting on Thursday afternoon on the protests, which have left dozens of people injured and with hundreds arrested, most of them teenagers, officials said.

France unveiled cost-cutting 2027 budget plans on Thursday as borrowing costs rose, and the draft budget bill seen by AFP said the government hopes to reduce the deficit to five percent of GDP with 43 billion euros in spending cuts and other measures. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez ordered mobilization of “the forces necessary to restore republican order,” and Edouard Geffray said he would meet representative staff unions, parent associations and student associations on Friday as the unrest became entangled in the race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron next May.

SourcesReutersFrance 24