Riot police fired tear gas at protesting students in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, amid nationwide strikes that led to nearly 2,000 arrests across France on Thursday.
High school and university students joined striking firefighters, healthcare workers, transport staff and other civil servants, demanding the hiring of more substitute teachers and better learning conditions. They erected makeshift barricades, blockaded schools and universities, and set garbage bins on fire during standoffs with police.
A total of 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday, up from 625 the previous day. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez condemned what he described as “unrestrained violence,” while the ministry reported that 305 police officers and gendarmes were injured.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray said that more than 400 schools would be closed on Friday due to the unrest. He argued that the student movement had been “held hostage by violent groups.”
Nunez said France’s police watchdog, the General Inspectorate of the National Police, had opened three investigations into incidents in which students were injured. In one case, prosecutors said a young man in Tours sustained head injuries consistent with being struck by a projectile fired from a less-lethal police weapon, according to RFI.
The interior minister, however, defended the overall police response as proportionate.
The government held a crisis meeting on Thursday, after which the prime minister’s office, citing intelligence services, claimed that the violence had been organized by the left-wing La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) party and “its far-left proxies.”
LFI spokesman Manuel Bompard urged the government “not to descend into conspiracy theories or treat high school students like children.”
“This spontaneous movement was born out of frustration with utterly unacceptable educational conditions,” Bompard told AFP.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, LFI’s candidate in next year’s presidential election, called on students to use only nonviolent methods.
The students are demanding more funding for public education, less overloaded timetables and smaller classes. Christelle Kauffmann, deputy secretary general of the SNPDEN-Unsa school administrators’ union, said principals lacked the resources to reduce class sizes.
Speaking to BFM TV, she condemned attacks on school principals, several of whom had been injured during the protests.
Several schools were damaged and vandalized, including Lycee Diderot in Paris, where the facade was blackened by a large fire involving garbage bins and scooters, and Lycee Nelson-Mandela in Nantes, where a deliberately set fire damaged the building.
The unrest comes as President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has fallen to near-record lows, with recent polls putting his approval or confidence rating at around 16-18%.