PARIS (Dispatches) - Police fired tear gas at protesters blockading French high schools on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents took to the streets on the biggest day of action in a wave of demonstrations against understaffed and dilapidated classrooms.
In Marseille and Nantes, protesters held up signs marked with “The state has killed national education” and other messages, in largely rallies. In Toulouse, parents linked arms at the front of a march through the city.
In Strasbourg, Lyon and Rennes, the demonstrations at times turned violent, with police firing tear gas and protesters lighting fires in the streets and hurling projectiles.
“There is such a gap between the elites and us,” said Hugo Vetzel, a recent high-school graduate in Strasbourg.
The protests began in September in the deprived suburbs of Paris, before spreading nationwide, presenting a major challenge to President Emmanuel Macron’s cash-strapped government at a time when it faces strong economic headwinds.
The High School Students Union said more than half of France’s high schools were blockaded or would close for the day. Some local education authorities have tried to move classes online.
“We want more money for the national educational system so that high schools are renovated,” said Roberta, another recent high-school graduate at a protest outside Paris’ prestigious Henri IV school.
Schools were facing a list of problems from water leaks to rat infestations, she added.
The government has responded to the demonstrations with riot police.
Rights groups, students and parent groups have accused authorities of using disproportionate force against minors.
France’s interior ministry said 6,100 people have been arrested since the protests began, the overwhelming majority of them minors. More than 1,800 people are being prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, the justice ministry said, without specifying the crimes.
At least 715 police officers and 215 teenagers have been injured in clashes, according to Lecornu’s office.
The government is under pressure to try to narrow a ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France’s growing debt pile, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push bond yields higher. The yield on France’s 10-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5% last week.
The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policy makers. Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.
Another day of general protests is planned for Oct 17, touted by Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left France Unbowed party. And five unions have called for a nationwide day of strikes on Nov 5 in support of higher pay, public services, jobs and industry.
Amnesty International has also called on French authorities to stop the “disproportionate” police response to student protests across the country.
“As children and young people prepare to take to the streets across France, authorities must ensure their safety and security and protect and facilitate the exercise of their right to demonstrate peacefully,” Anne Savinel-Barras, head of Amnesty International France, said in a statement on Monday.
The group said French authorities must act upon their human rights obligations and added they must stop the recent “disproportionate police response” to student protests.