Students, teachers and parents demonstrated over understaffed and dilapidated schools. Clashes were reported in Strasbourg, Lyon and Rennes, while other marches were largely peaceful.
Police fired tear gas on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents blockaded French high schools on the largest day so far of protests over understaffed and run-down classrooms.
Marches in Marseille and Nantes were largely peaceful, with signs reading 'The state has killed national education,' Reuters reported. In Toulouse, parents linked arms at the front of a march. In Strasbourg, Lyon and Rennes, police used tear gas after fires and projectiles, according to Reuters.
The High School Students Union said more than half of France's roughly 3,700 high schools were blockaded or would close. Some local authorities shifted classes online. A protester identified only as Roberta, outside Paris's Henri IV school, said the demand was more money to renovate high schools.
The interior ministry said 6,100 people had been arrested since the protests began, most of them minors. The justice ministry said more than 1,800 people were being prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, without listing the charges. The office of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said at least 715 police officers and 215 teenagers had been injured.
A 15-year-old lost a hand and part of a lower arm on Monday in northern France after picking up a police dispersal grenade, La Voix du Nord reported. Education minister Edouard Geffray has called the underlying demands legitimate while saying violence could not be justified, the New York Times reported.
People Sentiments Negative
- A student protester asked for more money to renovate high schools
- Geffray called demands legitimate but said violence went too far
- Interior ministry figures show thousands of mostly minor arrests