FRENCH authorities closed more than 400 secondary schools yesterday and banned protests outside them, after two weeks of a nationwide high school movement demanding teachers and decent buildings drew a heavy police response.
Police detained 1,949 people on Thursday alone, according to the Interior Ministry, as the movement reached 1,027 of France’s roughly 3,700 lycées.
Pupils rallied again yesterday despite the bans.
The protests began in the Paris suburbs and were taken national by the Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL). Students are demanding more teachers and staff, smaller classes, repairs to crumbling buildings and lighter timetables.
In Lille, they carried placards reading ‘We want the BAC, not the BAC’, setting the baccalauréat against the police anti-crime brigade of the same initials.
Pupils have faced tear gas, police charges and rubber bullets, and some 170 have been injured.
In Tours on Wednesday, a 16-year-old was hit in the eye by a police rubber bullet outside the Lycée Balzac. The local prosecutor has referred the case to the police watchdog.
‘They charged us from a distance. We weren’t throwing anything, we were within our rights,’ a friend said.
‘He was just sitting there, not doing any harm, he was on his phone. A police officer fired a Flash-Ball straight at him. He took it right in the eye.’
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said internal investigations had opened into brutality allegations involving three students.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s office has claimed intelligence services found that France Unbowed (LFI) and allied groups orchestrated the movement.
The USL’s Ryad Rani dismissed claims that pupils were being manipulated. ‘There is no instrumentalisation by any organisation. High school students are aware of what they are doing,’ he said.
LFI co-founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon said: ‘The students in the movement are harmless. The Lecornu government ordered the repression.’
