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”.

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 security forces, which sometimes used tear gas and batons to disperse the students.

“There are activists – particularly from the far-left – who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence,” Gefrray claimed.

“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he alleged, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded – “something we have never seen before”.

‘Deliberately targeted’

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

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

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

Critics have accused police of heavy-handed tactics.

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 doused with gasoline and struck on the sidelines of a high school student protest on Oct 2.

A video circulating on social media shows an individual dressed entirely in black with a masked face splashing liquid onto the teacher, who then clutches his face while a tree burns nearby.

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