Paris —
High school students set fires and clashed with police across France on Wednesday and Thursday, extending unrest for nearly a week.
Some 625 people, mostly young people, were detained by police on Wednesday, France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunes said, adding that 83 officers were injured. Government figures put the number of students and staff injured in the days-long protests at 159, including one student who lost part of his hand after setting off fireworks.
A video purportedly showing two teachers being attacked by students also surfaced, prompting condemnation from the French president, officials and teachers’ unions.
Protests began last week in some schools in France but gained momentum on Tuesday, with scenes of violence overshadowing a day of nationwide protests by trade unions, workers and students against the upcoming government budget. The situation outside of high schools worsened into Wednesday.
Clashes with police appeared to escalate in several French cities on Thursday, with the Lycée Nelson Mandela set on fire in Nantes and university students joining the protests. The French prime minister convened an inter-ministerial crisis meeting in the early afternoon to deal with the protests.
An under-resourced and overstretched education sector is a source of student anger as President Emmanuel Macron’s government considers how to balance historic public debt and already strained state spending.
Students complain that when teachers retire, they are not replaced and the school is in a deep state of disrepair.
High schools in poor suburbs of cities across France are at the center of ongoing tensions with police. Toulouse, Nantes, Rennes, Lyon and Lille have seen violent clashes between students and police, as well as arson attacks on or near school grounds.
In the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, one of France’s most deprived areas and the epicenter of violence around Paris, video showed high school students setting fires outside the gates of the Lycée Paul Éluard, one of the centers of violent protests, where students also tore down part of the fence. Lockdowns were set up outside many schools and trash cans were set on fire, a tactic common in large-scale protests.
“There are no windows, there is no water in the prefabricated toilets, and there are cockroaches and rats all over the school. The school canteen is too expensive and there is no toilet paper in the toilets, so I have to go to the school superintendent to get it,” Fadila, 17, a student at the Lycée Paul Eluard school, which is currently under renovation, told Reuters. “The buildings are dilapidated and the prefabricated classrooms are too cold in the winter, at minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) and 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer.”
Approximately 400 schools across the country have been affected by the student lockdown, with some educational institutions receiving support from teaching staff.
Lawmakers from the far-left party France Indomitable gathered in support of a number of school protests, including the mayor of Saint-Denis, Barry Bagayoko, who told reporters that “violence can be legal.”
“If it can be avoided, it’s better,” he said, adding that young people should be held accountable for breaking the law. But, he continued, “they have the right to make mistakes.”
“I understand that our young people are anxious and sometimes angry,” President Macron told reporters on Wednesday during a state visit to Spain.
“But none of these concerns, none of this argument, justifies violence. And in no case do those who are politically responsible (elected officials) — and this is probably a poorly chosen term — justify violence. We’ve seen a lot of politicians beating up students in front of schools, and I think this is serious.”
Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region that surrounds Paris, vowed in a post on X on Tuesday night to charge Bagayoko with 100,000 euros (about $114,000) to repair the damage to the Lycée Paul Éluard. She estimated the total cost of protests in the area to be around 1 million euros.
Tuesday’s union-led protest march was largely peaceful, but the police response to the school protests was brutal, with several footage showing officers pepper-spraying young people and officers violently confronting young protesters.
On Tuesday, riot police were set off with fireworks near the Lycée Paul Éluard, sparking anger at the police response. In one video shared on social media, a teenager is shot in the face with tear gas by a police officer at near point-blank range. A lawyer for the family of the 14-year-old boy, Eden L., accused police of an “outburst of violence” and said the family had filed a formal complaint with police.
CNN has reached out to the Saint-Denis police department for comment.
“We want to reduce the number of police officers because we feel that the police repression is excessive, whether it’s the high school student movement or social movements in general, and most of it is completely unjustified,” student Maël Breton told Reuters on Tuesday. “We see this as a real problem, especially given the severe budget shortfalls in other regions,” he said.
On Thursday, French Education Minister Edouard Jeffrey promised X to introduce online learning for students affected by the disruption. “Violence does not deprive students of their fundamental right to education,” he said.
