Police and high school students clash across France in protests over underfunded education
By Joseph Ataman, CNN
Paris (CNN) — Students fought running battles with police and several schools were ablaze Friday as a new day of violence gripped France with no end in sight to protests that have rocked the country.
The government announced more than 400 schools would be closed on Friday as it scrambled to calm tensions after days of demonstrations that have seen hundreds of teenagers taken into custody.
Young people in Strasbourg, eastern France, were building barricades in tear gas-clouded streets, while more peaceful protests were underway in Lyon and other cities Friday.
The protestors say France’s education sector is under-resourced and overstretched. Students complain that absent teachers aren’t being replaced and say schools are in a state of serious disrepair.
“We’ve moved from student protests to a question of public order,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said Friday morning, adding he feared the unrest would carry on through the weekend. Nationwide union-led protests in support of the high schoolers are planned for Tuesday.
With no obvious off-ramp for the protests and tensions rising as the violence continues, the government is scrambling to contain the situation outside high schools.
French Education Minister Édouard Geffray will meet with representatives of students, parents and staff on Friday, but given the highly localized nature of the protests, this may not provide a quick resolution.
Authorities in several parts of the country banned gatherings around the schools that were closed Friday, but the measure appears to have had little effect.
Speaking to radio station RTL, Darmanin proposed making parents pay for the damage incurred by students, an idea shot down as “absurd” by the far-left France Unbowed party, whose politicians have drawn criticism for rallying with students. On Thursday, government officials called on parents to prevent their children from taking part in violent protests.
Many of the protests at high schools are peaceful, but the images of arson and strong-arm police tactics are dominating the public debate in France. High schools in poorer suburbs of cities across the country have been at the center of the ongoing tensions with police.
As of Thursday, some 2,000 people had been taken into custody over the student protests, 90% of them adolescents, according to the justice ministry. Two students suffered serious injuries after allegedly being struck by crowd-control rounds fired by police.
In a post on X on Thursday, the Paris police prefecture said that its officers had been “challenged by individuals determined to clash” during Thursday’s protests. Agathe Foucault, a spokesperson for French police, told CNN affiliate BFMTV on Friday that officers “are required to use force in a necessary and proportionate manner.”
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