HUNDREDS of thousands of striking French secondary school pupils are joined by the CGT French trade union umbrella organisation today as the schools movement escalates.
Major French trade unions have mobilised to support secondary school students and children during the massive wave of nationwide education protests rocking France.
The CGT, led by Sophie Binet, Solidaires and education federations like SNEP-FSU and SNUEP-FSU, have officially aligned with the students, calling the youth movement a ‘convergence of struggles’ alongside the wider working class.
With the backing of professional organisations joining high school and university students on the demonstration today, the movement is rapidly expanding.
Minister of Education Edouard Geffray announced on Sunday, October 4th, that between 400 and 500 out of France’s 3,600 secondary schools were expected to suspend classes yesterday.
‘We’re missing our lessons to give you one,’ read one cardboard sign outside the Turgot high school, located in Paris’s 3rd arrondissement.
A 15-year-old student lost a hand on Monday picking up a police grenade as the brutal French police confronted the young protesters.
Since late September, students have blocked the entrances to hundreds of schools, complaining of teacher absences, overloaded timetables, dilapidated classrooms and buildings ill-adapted to rising temperatures, among other grievances.
The French Human Rights League (LDH) accused security forces of using disproportionate methods against protesters, many of whom are legally minors.
‘We can see that in the instructions given to the police, there is no directive to show restraint, even though they are dealing with children,’ LDH president Nathalie Tehio said.
More than 400 out of France’s 3,700 high schools, known as lycees, were partially or totally closed yesterday, and a third of the 468 lycees for teenagers aged 15 to 17 were closed in the Paris region.
In central Paris, teenage students demonstrated outside their schools while passing cars honked horns. Protesters outside the Gustave Eiffel high school set off fireworks in the direction of the police, who responded sporadiacally with tear gas.
The movement started on September 17 at a high school in the Paris suburb of Creteil, in support of teachers striking over a lack of staff and resources. More than 5,000 people, 85 per cent of them minors, have been arrested.
Protesters accuse the police of using excessive force, and internal investigations have been opened into at least three instances of alleged police brutality.
