Thousands mass in France for protests

VIOLENT STANDOFFS: The government said 215 students have been injured since the start of the movement last month, including a teenager who lost a hand on Monday

Thousands of demonstrators yesterday massed under heavy police surveillance in Paris and cities across France, as unions and teachers joined high-school students who for days have been demanding better conditions in protests punctuated by violent clashes.

Students have blocked the entrances to hundreds of high schools for 15-to-17-year-olds since late last month, complaining of missing teachers, overloaded schedules, dilapidated classrooms and buildings that cannot cope with rising temperatures.

In the Paris suburb of Creteil, where the protests started last month, students piled barriers outside the Saint-Exupery high school.

French high-school and university students attend a demonstration in Nantes, France, yesterday, as part of a nationwide day of protests and blockades, voicing anger over overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings, which they blame on years of underinvestment.

Photo: Reuters

“We are here to make our voice heard, all too often forgotten,” student Abderrahmane Abdelkader said on the microphone.

In the western city of Rennes, teacher Romain Dubourgn said he and other teachers were present to show support.

“With about 30 colleagues, we talked about the police brutality we’ve witnessed and decided to be there for our students if they need us,” he said.

While many protests have been peaceful, some demonstrators have lit garbage bin fires, destroyed bus shelters or clashed with riot police, who have responded with batons, tear gas and riot-control rounds.

The government said 215 students and 715 police officers have been injured since the start of the movement, with a 15-year-old losing a hand on Monday after, according to a police union source, he picked up a sting-ball grenade fired by riot officers.

However, a witness told La Voix du Nord that the grenade landed on the teenager.

Local prosecutor Etienne Thieffry late on Monday said he was not able to immediately determine “whether this teenager had actually picked up a grenade that exploded in his hand or whether the grenade had landed on him.”

Unions, rights groups and many students have accused the police of using disproportionate force.

The police have launched 10 internal investigations into allegations of brutality since the protests started, French Minister of the Interior Laurent Nunez said late on Monday.

A 16-year-old has lost the use of his right eye after he was seriously injured in the head on Wednesday last week during the blockade of Balzac High School in the central town of Tours.

The family has filed a legal complaint for “violence by a person with public authority,” local prosecutor Catherine Sorita-Minard’s office said.

On Monday last week, in Saint-Ouen-L’Aumone, northwest of Paris, a 14-year-old identified as Eden lost most of his teeth when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him at close range.

“His jaw is sealed shut, he can no longer speak and he eats through a straw,” his mother told media on Monday, adding that all his upper teeth were broken and “his lower teeth torn out.”

Television footage yesterday showed anti-riot police with shields pushing back crowds who had formed a human chain and blocked a road by a school in eastern Paris.

There were protests in Marseille in the south, Nantes in the west and Lyon in the southeast.

The unrest has erupted with just months to go before next year’s election to choose a successor to centrist French President Emmanuel Macron after his maximum two terms in office.

The government has sought to address the grievances, while accusing the France Unbowed (LFI) party of being behind the movement.

Veteran LFI presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon has strongly supported the protests, while calling for nonviolent methods. Authorities were expecting 20,000 to 40,000 demonstrators in Paris yesterday.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office has called for “peaceful” gatherings, calling for a return to “a structured, legal and democratic form of opposition.”

The head of the CGT labor union Sophie Binet has said its members would be there to “protect high-school students.”

Greens party leader Marine Tondelier has urged local officials and parents to wear white and “go and protect our children during demonstrations.”

Amnesty International late on Monday said the French authorities should “put an end to the disproportionate police repression seen in recent days during student protests.”

“The images and testimonies widely circulated over the past week raise alarming concerns about the dangerous use of tear gas, batons and policing techniques by the police,” Amnesty International France president Anne Savinel-Barras said.

Since the start of the movement, 24 schools have been burned or ransacked, the French Ministry of National Education said.

More than 5,000 people, 87 percent of them minors, have been arrested.