By Janis Laizans and Clotaire Achi
SAINT-DENIS, France, Oct 13 (Reuters) – Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined protesters outside a high school in a working-class suburb of Paris on Tuesday as French pupils took to the streets for another day of demonstrations over poor learning conditions.
Now in its fourth week, the nationwide protest movement over teacher shortages, classroom overcrowding and crumbling school buildings has involved marches, blockades of hundreds of schools and, in some cases, clashes with police.
Pupils clustered outside several schools in Paris and other cities on Tuesday morning, brandishing placards and megaphones.
“We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,” Thunberg told reporters outside Lycee Paul Eluard in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, one of the schools where the protest movement first gained traction.
“Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises … it’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future,” she said.
MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS, WITH OUTBREAKS OF VIOLENCE
Large crowds marched peacefully through Nantes in the west, Strasbourg in the east and Marseille in the south, holding hand-made signs with slogans such as “Tear gas doesn’t make us cry as much as the state of the national education system”. Marchers were also mustering in Paris.
Footage from BFM TV showed clashes between people dressed in black and riot police in Strasbourg and Nantes, with clouds of tear gas in some streets.
In Lyon, the local authorities asked organisers to call off a march after a group of “hostile individuals” preceding the main procession vandalised shops and a petrol station and clashed with police.
While there was no immediate information on who was involved, it is not uncommon in France for street protests to attract so-called “casseurs”, a fringe of rioters who seek to confront police and destroy property.
The scene was calmer in front of Paris city hall, where a youth orchestra played Antonin Dvorak’s “New World Symphony”. Some musicians had protest stickers on their cellos and violins.
The education ministry said 214 schools were closed, down from 800 on a similar protest day a week ago. It said 94.2% of high schools were open.
The cash-strapped government has promised to act to address the pupils’ concerns, but has little room for manoeuvre at a time when concerns over the national debt and the budget deficit are pushing up borrowing coststo the highest level in years.
It has expressed sympathy with the students’ grievances, but has deployed riot police to quell the protests, leading to confrontations in which hundreds of people have been injured and thousands arrested.
POLITICAL POLARISATION AHEAD OF ELECTION
The government suspended the use of stun grenades last week after one teenager lost a hand.
Six months ahead of a presidential election, the protest movement and the police response have elicited polarised responses from leading contenders to replace Emmanuel Macron.
“The police are losing their breath running after young people to beat them up and injure them,” said hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has a chance of making the runoff according to opinion polls, in a post on X on Tuesday.
“The only ones not losing their breath are the young people bravely protesting,” he added, accusing the media of failing to show the extent of police brutality and renewing his call for adults to stand with the students to protect them.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the frontrunner in the presidential race according to polls, has denounced violence by protesters and called for those who have damaged schools – or their parents if they are minors – to pay for repairs.
The government has already introduced a bill that would allow precisely that. It is going through parliament.
(Additional reporting by Abdul Saboor, Stamos Prousalis, Sudip Kar-Gupta and Dominique Vidalon; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Alex Richardson)
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