from Your News:
Nationwide protests over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating schools have escalated into arson, attacks and clashes with police, leaving hundreds injured as the French government accuses the hard-left France Unbowed party of helping organize the movement.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
France deployed additional riot police and mobile gendarmes Friday as nationwide high school protests escalated into fires, attacks on school personnel, confrontations with police and widespread property damage, with approximately 2,000 people arrested since the unrest began.
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About 400 high schools were closed Friday, roughly one in 10 nationwide, as the government sought to contain violence that began alongside student demonstrations over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating school buildings and education funding. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said 65 education employees had been injured, including 40 head teachers, while government figures showed hundreds of police and gendarmes had also been hurt.
The unrest began in the Paris region in September and spread rapidly across the country. By Thursday, the Interior Ministry had recorded protest actions at 1,027 of France’s approximately 3,700 high schools, including blockades at 222 schools, while authorities reported 1,949 arrests that day. Le Monde reported on the nationwide disruptions, although the linked article itself is a separate opinion piece concerning migration as a geopolitical tool rather than the current protest totals. Current reporting from the newspaper places the number of affected schools at 1,027 and arrests Thursday at 1,949.
Violence continued Friday. Tear gas filled streets in Strasbourg, protesters launched fireworks toward police lines in Marseille and garbage containers were set on fire in Rennes. In the Paris suburb of Pantin, demonstrators set fences and other objects ablaze and threw firecrackers toward riot police.
In La Ciotat near Marseille, regional education officials said a youth sprayed petrol at a teacher. Video aired by BFM TV appeared to show a masked person spraying liquid toward a man’s face, although Reuters said it could not independently establish the circumstances surrounding the incident.
A separate incident in Marseille initially reported as teachers being deliberately doused in gasoline was later clarified by officials. Two teachers at Victor Hugo high school were inadvertently splashed when a student attempted to throw gasoline into a trash container, according to Reuters’ account of Thursday’s unrest.
Other incidents have been more destructive. Young people outside Marseille’s Saint-Exupéry high school forced firefighters away from a vehicle and then set the fire truck ablaze. A school in Nantes was set on fire, another suffered fire damage in Le Havre and vehicles and public infrastructure have been attacked in several cities. Public transportation in Marseille was temporarily suspended after employees were injured.
