France protests: nearly 450,000 take to the streets nationwide

Mass protests swept France on Tuesday. According to the lycée students’ union, around 450,000 people took part in the demonstrations, including 100,000 in Paris, while the Interior Ministry put the nationwide figure at 256,000, with 56,000 in the capital, the broadcaster BFM TV reported on its website. School and university students, together with trade unions, are demanding that the government tackle chronic staff shortages in schools and their dilapidated condition.

According to the secondary-school students’ union, which posted the figures on the social network X, 1,800 lycées were blockaded, hit by demonstrations or shut down on orders from the Education Ministry on Tuesday — the union called it “a new mobilisation record.”

Unrest in major cities

France24 reported that demonstrations took place on Tuesday in major cities including Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Rennes. Most of the rallies remained peaceful, but some students set fire to rubbish bins and smashed bus shelters, clashing with police, who used batons, tear gas and other riot-control equipment.

In Paris, protesters built a makeshift barricade of bins and bicycles laid on their sides in front of one lycée. Parents of pupils and other adults positioned themselves between the demonstrators and the police keeping order. Clashes with police also broke out in Paris, Lyon and Strasbourg — in the Alsace capital, officers detained a protester armed with an ice scraper, the website DNA reported.

Trade unions also joined the streets in support of the schoolchildren, with organisers urging members to take part and lend their presence to the students’ demands.

Casualties from earlier protests

Earlier protests were likewise marked by arrests and injuries. According to media reports, 715 police officers and 215 protesters have been hurt since the wave of demonstrations began. On Monday, in the northern French town of Lens, a fifteen-year-old lost a hand after picking up a police stun grenade from the ground. In another incident, a tear-gas grenade seriously injured a young man, and in a separate case a woman lost an eye, the website LaDépêche reported.

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Source: novinky.cz