Up to 500 French schools to be totally or partly closed on Oct 5, says minister

• Up to 500 French high schools will be partly or fully closed on Oct 5 due to ongoing student protests over poor conditions and teacher absences, Education Minister Edouard Geffray said.
• The protests began on Sept 17 and escalated with violence, involving far-left activists hijacking the movement and causing injuries to 78 education staff members.
• Over 5,000 arrests, mostly minors, have been made; police face criticism for heavy-handed tactics after a teacher was attacked with gasoline during a protest.

PARIS – Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Oct 5 because of a wave of student protests that has shaken the country, the education minister said.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, said Education Minister Edouard Geffray on Oct 4, adding that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

He described the closures as chiefly a security precaution ahead of large-scale protests that the leaders of the movement have called for Oct 6.

The teens at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absences, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.

Geffray said the number of schools affected on Oct 5 would be comparable to the figure from Oct 2 but vowed there would be a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.

More than a third of the 468 schools in the wider Ile-de-France region surrounding the capital will be shut on Oct 5 as a result of the protests, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing president of the region, told broadcaster Franceinfo.

The movement began at a Paris school on Sept 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and the security forces, which have used tear gas and truncheons against the students.

‘Deliberately targeted’

At Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, students took turns expressing their grievances at an open-air meeting on Oct 4.

When you are a student from one of the deprived districts, said one student, “The violence is unleashed.”

She referred in particular to one student who had lost his teeth to a police rubber bullet and another who had been hit in the eye.

One 16-year-old boy, Campion, held a placard that read: “They say they are listening to us but prefer to gas us”.

“I don’t understand why the government deploys so much force against a case that is valid: our education, our future,” he told AFP.

Geffray, in his statement, spoke of far-left infiltrators who had “hijacked” the movement “and engaged in extreme violence”.

“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he said, adding that 78 education staff members had been injured.

“They were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system,” Geffray said.

Organisers have called for the protests to continue on Oct 6, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.

In a bid to address the protesters’ concerns, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu set out a timetable on Oct 4 urging local authorities to prioritise filling gaps left by long-term absences and unfilled posts.

He also called a meeting for Oct 6 with regional presidents to discuss overhauling the country’s often-dilapidated school buildings.

Violent incidents

More than 5,000 people, 85 per cent of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the movement.

A 16-year-old was detained on Oct 4 over the assault of a teacher in the southern town of La Ciotat. The teacher, 59, was struck and doused with gasoline on the sidelines of a high school student protest on Oct 2.

A group of youths were last week filmed beating and kicking a policeman on the ground in Belfort in eastern France in images that caused an outcry among officials.

Two youths, Bulgarian nationals aged 15 and 17, have been arrested and investigated for suspected aggravated violence, the prosecutor said.

One of the youths, whom the policeman had tried to arrest before being beaten, has now filed his own attempted murder complaint, his lawyer said.

The France branch of Amnesty last week slammed “disproportionate police violence” in tackling the demonstrations and said students must be allowed to express their grievances.

“Authorities must allow young people to exercise these rights without fear of being hit by tear gas grenades or batons, or being arbitrarily taken into police custody,” said Amnesty France president Anne Savinel-Barras.

But Interior Minister Laurent Nunez stated that security forces “are not cracking down on young people” but rather “protecting” school and university students wishing to “peacefully voice their demands”. AFP