Arab News | France braces for fresh nationwide student demonstrations

PARIS: France readied on Tuesday for fresh nationwide demonstrations supporting students who have been protesting poor classroom conditions for weeks, with authorities and participants wary of further violence.

The mobilization, backed by unions and the far-left opposition France Unbowed party, was to include a march through Paris starting at 1200 GMT, along with marches in other cities.

It follows demonstrations on Thursday that saw more than 70,000 people take to the streets across France, with about 500 people arrested.

French authorities had been hoping that the student protest movement that started in late September was starting to ease, ahead of half-term holidays. The protests have seen students pile up dumpsters and other obstacles to block access to high schools, with clashes occasionally breaking out with police.

On Monday, only 130 of France’s 3,700 lycees were closed, according to the education ministry, though it stated that, while “the number of school closures is falling… the violence is intensifying.”

In an incident seemingly unrelated to the protests, police arrested a 14-year-old on Monday near Marseille after a middle school headmaster and a teacher were shot with a hunting rifle, wounding both.

The education ministry said eight members of teaching staff were injured on Monday, mostly in the Paris region and cities of Bordeaux and Lyon, in relation to the protests. Its tally did not include the shooting, which police were treating as a separate case.

‘Aren’t being heard’

While most of the protests have been peaceful, students say they are determined to press the government to address the problems of too many absent teachers, dilapidated buildings, overcrowded class schedules and other grievances.

“Students aren’t being heard enough… not their proposals to authorities and elected officials,” a 19-year-old graphic design student in Paris, Leo, said.

He added that the protesters — many of whom were minors — were “disturbed by the level of repression never before seen for a student movement.”

One young protester lost a hand from a police stun grenade earlier in the protests, another lost many of his teeth from a tear-gas canister fired in his face at close range, and another lost an eye.

Rights groups and students have accused the police of a disproportionate use of force.

Several police officers and teachers have also been hurt, and on Monday authorities said fireworks fired through a tube injured two school workers in Reims, one school worker in a Paris suburb and a police officer outside a school in Marseille.

Tuesday’s demonstrations supporting the students were to be followed on Saturday by wider public rallies against the rising cost of living.

Naila, a 17-year-old student in the city of Rennes who said she would participate in Tuesday’s demonstration, hoped it would “converge” with the wider one on Saturday.

President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters on Monday, said the pupils’ grievances would take time to address and urged restraint from protesters.

“These are issues that deserve time, consultations, discussion and respect,” Macron said.

Worries about lost lessons

More than 6,800 people — largely minors — have been taken into police custody over the course of the protests, according to the justice ministry.

Police have opened internal investigations into 24 allegations of brutality against demonstrators.

After last week’s nationwide demonstrations, the government promised some 3,000 substitute teachers would be deployed in the coming days to replace absent staff at the 114 worst-affected high schools.

A government spokeswoman on Monday said they had started to be assigned.

But the national students’ union has dismissed the government’s move as “crumbs” and was demanding a 10 billion-euro ($11 billion) boost for lycees.

Some parents and students, however, voiced concerns about all the classes being missed because of the protests. A few worried that the children were being used as pawns by opposition political parties.

Some parents pleaded for the teens to lift their blockades at Paris schools.

“The blockades are by their very nature undemocratic,” complained one mother, who went by the pseudonym Gladys.

“It’s shameful to block students who really want to study, by a movement they aren’t part of,” said Clara Juillet, a university student in the city of Tours who has been unable to attend lessons for a week because of the protests.