France | National day of protest to support schoolchildren rising for their future

Powerful scenes emerging on this national day of action. A human chain of teachers, politicians, nurses lined up between police and students at the Porte de Vincennes, East of Paris. Shared by independent journalist Remy Buisine. Together singing the Marseillaise and chanting "Du fric, du fric pour le service public !" Money, money for public services."

Another scene from Strasbourg, shared by France's leading student union, shows schoolchildren, students and union members, peacefully advancing while riot police move back: "Together we will always be stronger."

With 1800 lycées and 90 universities blocked across the country, according to the Union Syndicale Lycéenne, the sixth-formers' union hailed this day of action as historic.

Following two weeks of protests met with life-endangering police repression, the school union listed their demands to government. "The abolition of Parcoursup, 150 000 new places in higher education, a 10 billion emergency renovation plan for school buildings, massive teacher recruitment, the end of repression and the abandonment of the "loi-casseurs."

The "loi-casseurs" is the latest measure in the government's attempt to crush the schoolchildren's movement which has become the frontline to defend the system of society France is built on. (See deep-dive here.)

The "loi-casseurs" "the vandalisers' law" aims to, among other things, fine people who are simply present when property is damaged. While France's Justice Minister, Gérald Darmanin, speaking on RTL, urged French courts to impose fines on parents. Among the thousands taking to France's streets today, parents are calling for the government to respect French laws already in force - not to damage children's bodies. "Touche pas aux enfants." "Don't touch the children," is a march slogan.

Scene after scene of police charging, gassing, shooting, strangling, beating, sexually assaulting schoolchildren, has for the last fortnight mobilised parents, teachers, union members and politicians to put their own bodies between schoolchildren and the police meant to protect them.

Lawyers, magistrates and human rights defenders have slammed the brutal repression by militarised police as an affront to democracy, a fundamental shift from the rule of law itself. A petition to the National Assembly to ban mutilating weapons and neck compress techniques from being used on these schoolchildren's protests has already reached 10,000 signatures overnight.

On Monday, with government authorisation to use all available weapons, French police fired a grenade, blowing off the hand of a 15-year-old boy in Lens, north of France. "I almost vomited," said a witness, a schoolchild, describing the moment when through clouds of toxic chemical gas, police fired the explosives tearing off her classmate's hand, landing on him - as reported by independent media Contre Attaque. Later videos show the schoolboy on the ground, his classmates trying to help.

The unspeakable scene in Lens, brings the count to at least four schoolchildren maimed by their own government. Mael, a 16-year-old lost his right eye after being shot by a police officer in Tours, his injuries confirmed by the Loire town's prosecutor as corresponding to a LBD gun. His family are pressing charges.

Eye surgeons and human rights groups have long called for the French government to ban such LBD guns, which had already partially-blinded French citizens. Yet the next day, another police officer shot a second schoolboy in the eye, in the Paris suburb of Argentueil - again reportedly with the LBD gun. There is no confirmation yet whether surgeons have managed to save his sight.

Eden, the 14-year-old whom a police officer shot in the face at close-range with a tear gas grenade-launcher outside his school, has been left with a double fracture to his jaw. Now held together by metal, he needs years of reconstruction, his family said Monday, and is only able to eat through a straw. His entire upper teeth shattered.

Calls for the Ministre de l'Intérieur to resign

In public admission of where the responsibility lies, the Ministre de l'Intérieur, France's equivalent of the home secretary, Laurent Nuñez, told TF1 television he has authorised police to use "all intermediate weapons" in their arsenal, "with no restraint."

"Apparently these children are too young to be listened to but old enough to be mutilated, to be repressed" slammed Gabrielle Cathala, a member of parliament for La France insoumise as she voiced growing calls for Nuñez to resign in the National Assembly. "You are at the head of a police force that mutilates children, blinds children, destroys their jaws, and even, in some images, police officers attempting to drown children. The least you could do – after going on TF1 to say that you weren't asking the police to show any restraint, would be to resign in front of this National Assembly." SAVE, the association Stop State Violence founded by members of people killed by French police, also called for his resignation, as did Le Mouvement, a citizens' movement.

Cathala, who represents the Val D'Oise départment where Eden's parents are pressing charges for the police's shooting of their son, slammed the government's mass arrests of schoolchildren as even more repressive than that of the Gilets Jaunes, the yellow vests protest movement against rising cost of living.

"Our children matter and it is out of the question that we continue to stand their voice being mutilated by a police force that is out of control."

"Never, at least since May '68, has a government responded like this to a movement of schoolchildren," decried Sophie Binet head of the CGT trade union in a tribune published online and in Libération. "A democracy cannot confuse a youth mobilisation as a threat to be eradicated." "Let's not sacrifice a generation. We must say it clearly: what is happening today is serious, very serious."

The school students are holding up a mirror to the absurdity of the future we offer them she said. "With the consequences of climate breakdown more palpable each day, the ruling class buries its head in the sand and we continue to pollute, as if nothing's happening. While the very designers of AI speak of major risk to humanity, no serious regulatory initiative is taken. While we witness a genocide in Palestine live, the Israeli government continues to kill with complete impunity."

Mediapart, a French investigative media, revealed yesterday that there have been incidents of police officers sexually assaulting schoolchildren while in custody.

With analysis of France 2, national television channel by independent watchdog Acrimed, finding a dominant narrative "urban violence." As in other social movements, particularly those from the suburbs, the school blockades have been depicted as "urban riots," distracting from the demands and the government's social violence that first prompted schools in the suburbs to barricade their doors.

"From Saint-Denis to Paris," schoolchildren are smashing through the race and class divide between the capital and its surrounding working-class towns. Students at Paris schools are singing chants of solidarity with the least-funded schools in working-class areas. While the movement has no borders, impacting rural areas and towns across France.

The most important question being asked by parents, unions and politicians, is why are police turning up with grenades and weapons of war capable of blinding children at France's schools? Why are riot police being sent to gas children?

"After the yellow vests, after the climate march, after protesters for retirement at 60, after the Kanaks, the young people who were mutilated after Nahel's assassination, now you are mutilating school students," Cathala told Nuñez in the National Assembly.

Cathala called on feminists and child advocates to join today's march. "Our children matter and it is out of the question that we continue to stand their voice being mutilated by a police force that is out of control."

"Don't you worry, the oldies are coming too."

Underneath the call for "every young person in France to take the streets, one Paris mother wrote: "Don't you worry, 'La viellesse' is coming too." (In French, "la jeunesse" is the term for the youth population and "la viellesse" for the older generation.)

The Paris march starts at 2 pm at place de la République.

Editor's notes: Stop State Violence, an association supporting victims, published earlier estimates of at least 400 schoolchildren injured. SAVE says "assaults run into thousands of children and adolescents."

More than 6000 schoolchildren have now been arrested, by police officers issued instructions by France's Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, that "proportionate force should not inhibit re-establishing order."

Nuñez, who personally authorised his police force to use the full arsenal of "intermediary weapons" which include military-grade weapons of war with the potential to blind and maim schoolchildren "with no restraint," has declared 215 schoolchildren have been injured along with 700 police officers. It is not clear how the Ministry is tracking the number of schoolchildren injured.

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