A Quarter of a Million March in France’s School Revolt
The interior ministry counted 266,000 demonstrators across France on Tuesday, 56,000 of them in Paris, in the largest day of student protest in decades. Nearly 500 people were detained, taking the total past 6,500 since the movement began, most of them minors. Water cannon were used in Rennes, tear gas in Paris and Marseille.
The student union Union Syndicale Lycéenne says 2,000 secondary schools were at a standstill and every university mobilised. What has radicalised the movement is the injuries. A fifteen-year-old lost a hand in Lens on Monday after picking up a police grenade, which a police union source said appeared to be a sting-ball round fired by officers. The interior minister Laurent Nuñez called the police response proportionate in “almost all cases”, said the protests had at times turned into riots, and put the number of officers injured at 715. The prime minister Sébastien Lecornu denounced “ultra violence” threatening schools, pledged that any “accidents” would be investigated, and called the charge that the police are racist a “lie”. The grievances themselves are unglamorous and old. It began at a single school in a Paris suburb on 21 September over staffing and buildings: “In Saint-Denis, just right outside of Paris, high schools see the ceilings falling apart, water in the walls, rats,” one protester said. Fresh protests are called for Thursday, and the movement is now a live issue in a presidential campaign that runs to next spring.