Over 5,000 Arrested as Student Protests in France Enter Third Week

Protests by teenagers outside their schools are entering a third week in France, as students demand an improvement of the education system.

More than 5,000 people, 85 percent of them minors, have been arrested since Monday, according to the interior ministry.

Critics have accused police of heavy-handed tactics, though much of the protest itself has been violent.

A 16-year-old was detained on Sunday over the assault of a teacher in the southern town of La Ciotat. The teacher, 59, was doused with gasoline and struck on the sidelines of a high school student protest on Friday, according to an AFP report.

A video circulating on social media showed an individual dressed entirely in black with a masked face splashing liquid onto the teacher, who then clutches his face while a tree burns nearby.

The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and security forces, which sometimes used tear gas and batons to disperse the young adults.

Videos shared on social media since last week showed teenagers setting vehicles and bins on fire in multiple locations.

Organisers have called for the protests to continue on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.

Edouard Geffray, education minister, said lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”.

Geffray said 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

According to the minister, “activists, particularly from the far-left” have infiltrated and hijacked the high school student movement to engage in extreme violence.