Protests over crowded classrooms, teacher shortages and lengthy school days have spread across France, with police detaining more than 400 people, many of them minors, on Tuesday. The movement began at high schools in the Paris area last week before expanding nationwide. Some school blockades turned violent as protesters burned rubbish bins and hurled bottles at officers, who responded with batons and tear gas.
Authorities said 48 law enforcement officers were injured. The unrest coincided with a public sector strike over the government’s budget plans, adding to political tensions and a headache for Emmanuel Macron ahead of next year’s presidential election. The French education ministry says protests have affected about 400 of France’s 3,700 lycees (high schools).
Protests began in Paris last week, where teenagers have been blockading their schools for several days. This week, demonstrations and blockades have spread around the country. On Tuesday, protesters set fire to rubbish bins outside a high school in Lille, northern France, and threw bottles, paving stones and other projectiles at police.
Confrontations have also been reported in Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes, Lyon and Marseille. In some cases, officers responded with tear gas after bus shelters and advertising hoardings were vandalised. According to AFP, high school students piled up rubbish bins at the entrance to the Lycee Gabriel Guist’hau in Nantes.
About 80 students gathered outside the Lamartine school in Paris, brandishing slogans complaining of getting “More hours of lessons than sleep”. At the Lycee Brequigny in the northwestern city of Rennes, Brittany’s largest high school, about 100 students threw projectiles at the building, an video journalist reported. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told BFM TV that 440 people had been detained nationwide, although the tally was not final.
About two-thirds were subsequently placed in police custody, he said. Nunez condemned protesters who arrived with their faces covered and carrying projectiles, saying there was no justification for seeking confrontations with officers. He also said there had been seven incidents in which hydrochloric acid was thrown at police. reported that police carrying riot shields struck students with batons when a crowd formed in the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
