▶ Watch Video: Protests in France as students demand better school conditions
Paris — French high school students lit fires outside schools and faced off with police on Friday as a protest movement that has forced the closure or disrupted education at more than 560 establishments showed no sign of abating.
The movement, which began last week in the Paris region and rapidly spread nationwide, has seen teenage pupils in their final years of high school block access to buildings and clash with police.
The students say their school hours are excessively long, conditions inadequate including overheated classrooms and dilapidated buildings, and that there are too many staff absences.
“For a whole year, we didn’t have a science teacher. We don’t have any textbooks,” said Simon, a 15-year-old who declined to give his surname outside the Turgot high school in central Paris. “And still, we’re the lucky ones. It’s even worse in the suburbs.”
The government says the grievances are legitimate but has condemned what it calls “urban violence.”
Students have accused police of using excessive force and causing injuries by regularly firing tear gas canisters to disperse the protests.
In Paris on Friday, fire damaged the entrances of two high schools, with the fire brigade called to extinguish the blazes, an AFP photographer said.
“Held hostage by ultra-violent fringe groups”
Education Minister Edouard Geffray said “the high school student movement is being held hostage by ultra-violent fringe groups.”
His ministry said Friday that education had been disrupted at more than 560 high schools out of the 3,700 in the country. More than 1,000 high schools were affected Thursday, the interior ministry has said.
Many high schools have planned to conduct classes remotely, particularly in the southern city of Marseille.
At least 65 staff members have been injured, including 40 high school principals, since the start of the movement, Geffray told BFMTV, while about 170 students have been wounded and over 100 high schools have suffered “severe damage.”
“Parents must clearly step up and tell their children not to go” to the protests, he said. “What matters now is ensuring our children are no longer out on the streets, because they are in danger.”
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he has asked prosecutors to hold parents liable for damage caused by their children during the protests and “pay for repairs.”
Since the start of the movement, around 2,000 people have been taken into police custody “90% of whom were minors,” Darmanin told RTL.
“We’ve won — our school is closed”
In the western city of Rennes, the tension was already palpable outside the Jean-Mace high school with students dressed in black and wearing balaclavas standing not far from a heavy police presence.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’ve won — our school is closed this morning,” said Lola, 16, who declined to give her last name.
She condemned what she said was police violence.
“It makes us even angrier — the police have no right to hit us or use tear gas on us,” she said.
Police used tear gas at the Kerichen high school in Brest, in western France, an AFP photographer said.
The protests have also made a strong political echo just over half a year before presidential elections, with the government accusing the hard left France Unbowed (LFI) — whose firebrand leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is again standing for the presidency – of being behind the movement.
But senior LFI official Manuel Bompard accused the government of “descending into conspiracy theories.”
