Masked attackers set fires at the doors of a Paris vocational high school Monday, confining about 100 students and staff inside, as nationwide student protests over school conditions entered another week with thousands already arrested and hundreds reported injured.
At the Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin High School in the 13th arrondissement, Principal Carole Zerbib said a group of about 10 people in hoods, masks and black clothing arrived around 7:50 a.m. as students were arriving. She told BFMTV they looked “very determined, very fast,” and that staff “immediately understood that we were not going to be able to talk with them.”
Zerbib said the group threw full trash bins and other flammable material in front of the entrance, brought a sofa and bicycles to barricade the door, smashed glass with a pair of crutches, and set fires outside using a flammable liquid. A staff member was struck in the face by a shard of glass, BFMTV reported. Firefighters and police were met with mortar fire. Courses were canceled for the day.
A video team from BFMTV recorded flames at the entrance and described staff being blocked as they tried to use an extinguisher, with the principal heard telling confined students to move up to the first floor.
BREAKING: Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exits when staff tried to put the fire out.
A film crew recorded the terrifying attempted murder.
“The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.”
“The fire continues. You see all the silhouettes moving behind it; they continue to feed this fire, making it stronger and stronger. The school staff is not even going to try to put it out anymore; they can’t manage it. We can hear the principal here asking the hundred confined students to step back and move up to the first floor.”
The building was full of staff, students, and journalists, but these rioters appear ready to kill anyone still inside the vocational chemistry school.
In the video sequence, a BFMTV host stated: “The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.” The staff speaking from inside the building confirmed they were “under siege.”
Principal Carole Zerbib said, “It was terrible for the students and the staff, who witnessed an outburst of violence…I think we had rarely seen violence this strong in front of us.”
She said the attackers “were quite organized and had prepared their move,” and that she had been warned by students and teachers of calls on social media to burn the school. “These aren’t my students. These are groups.”
Junior Interior Minister Jean-Didier Berger, speaking on BFMTV after the fires were put out and the school evacuated, called the images “particularly shocking” and said, “These are criminal acts that fall under the law and must be repressed in the harshest way.”
“Which outlet is that?” she asked. When she was told it was CNews, she said, “Oh no, I had said no.” When the journalist replied that it was the press, she said: “I don’t agree. Because I don’t agree with CNews’s editorial line. I think you don’t do any good. You don’t do any good for young people.”
BREAKING: Another major school arson attack at Blaise Pascal High School in the French city of Rouen.
The entire entrance is currently in flames.
School staff can only stand and watch it burn.
Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/CZ8h1aDO3U
She had earlier told other reporters that as long as police remained outside, “I tell myself it will be all right,” while adding it was “not impossible that they come back, since they want to strike at the symbols of the state.”
The clash came as Education Minister Édouard Geffray said classes would be fully or partly suspended Monday at 400 to 500 of France’s roughly 3,700 high schools because safety conditions were not met. He said 24 schools had been burned or ransacked since the protests spread from the Paris region in mid-September. Organizers have called a further day of action Tuesday, which student unions have labeled “act III.”
Geffray said Sunday that 78 education staff members had been injured since the unrest began, including “some of them by high schoolers.” In addition, 170 students had been hurt. He said far-left activists had “hijacked” the movement. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said more than 5,000 people have been arrested since last Monday, about 85 percent of them minors, and that more than 300 officers and gendarmes have been injured. Police recorded 1,747 arrests on Friday alone, he told TF1.
In Tours, prosecutors said a young protester lost sight in one eye while battling with police.
Students and the Union syndicale lycéenne say they are protesting against reduced teaching staff, overcrowded classes, long schedules, the Parcoursup admissions system and buildings in disrepair. The government has called some of those complaints legitimate while condemning what Nuñez has described as a slide into “riot and urban violence.”
BREAKING: A French physics teacher was doused with gasoline today (Oct. 2) while trying to put out a fire students had lit near a tree in La Ciotat.
The teacher was reportedly temporarily blinded, according to French news reports, when the gasoline was thrown into his eyes.
Youths then began kicking the physics teacher.
The main suspect was reportedly arrested.
Yesterday in Marseille, youths are being investigated for attempted murder after dousing a principal and a vice-principal with gasoline during an attempted arson outside a high school administrative office.
Follow: @RMXnews
Police have 'locked down' an entire town to stop unrest by setting up a dispersal zone covering the whole of Gosport following protests sparked by the arrival of a migrant boat using a 'new route' from Normandy.
Between 400 and 500 French secondary schools are expected to suspend lessons fully or partially on Monday, 5 October, as nationwide student protests continue following several days of violence, arrests and damage to educational buildings.
French Education Minister Édouard Geffray said on Sunday that the number of affected lycées was likely to be broadly similar to Friday, when between 400 and 500 establishments suspended classes.
“There will probably be just as many on Monday, but with a partial, progressive resumption of classes,” Geffray said during interviews with France 2 and France Inter.
France has around 3,700 lycées. The government says classes are being suspended where normal security conditions cannot be guaranteed, including schools damaged during the unrest or where staff have been directly targeted. French reporting on the education ministry’s latest figures said Geffray expected disruption on a similar scale to Friday.
The closures mark the latest stage in a protest movement which began in the Paris region in September before spreading to cities across France.
Students initially mobilised over conditions in the education system, including shortages of teachers and replacement staff, overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating school buildings and demanding timetables. Pressure surrounding the Parcoursup university admissions system has also featured prominently in the demonstrations. Accounts from pupils involved in the blockades have highlighted frustration over conditions in schools and wider concerns about educational inequality.
As EU Today reported on 3 October, the protests have since developed into a broader confrontation involving students, education staff, police and political activists.
Geffray said on Sunday that 24 educational establishments had been “burned or vandalised” since the unrest intensified. He also said 78 employees of the national education system had been injured.
The minister has accused organised far-left activists of infiltrating the student demonstrations and contributing to the escalation of violence.
According to the government, some education staff have been deliberately attacked because of their position within the school system. Geffray said schools would remain closed or operate only partially in cases where staff or pupils could not be adequately protected.
The political argument over responsibility for the unrest has intensified alongside the protests. Government ministers have accused activists connected with the hard-left La France Insoumise of encouraging blockades and helping to broaden the mobilisation. LFI representatives have rejected accusations that they are responsible for the violence and have continued to support the students’ underlying demands. The dispute over the political role in the protests has become part of the wider confrontation between the government and the demonstrators.
Friday brought another large-scale police operation.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 1,747 people were detained during the day, compared with 1,954 on Thursday, taking the number of arrests since the beginning of last week to more than 5,000. Authorities said around 85 per cent of those detained were minors.
Of 735 schools affected by demonstrations or disruption on Friday, “urban violence” was recorded near 158, according to the Interior Ministry. The latest official arrest figures underline the scale of the police response.
The violence has increasingly complicated attempts by student organisations to maintain the focus on their original education demands.
Representatives of student organisations met Geffray on Friday but said afterwards that they had received no sufficiently concrete commitments from the government. They called for the mobilisation to continue and announced a new nationwide day of action, described as “Act III”, for Tuesday, 6 October.
The government has already made one concession. A proposed measure that would have introduced registration fees of €178 for non-grant students entering BTS vocational programmes and €270 for preparatory classes for France’s grandes écoles was withdrawn as the demonstrations intensified. The withdrawal was announced as hundreds of schools were being affected by blockades.
The protests nevertheless show little sign of ending.
Many students continue to argue that their schools lack adequate staff and investment, while teachers and parents have raised similar concerns over replacement teachers and the condition of buildings.
At the same time, the scale of the damage and the number of injuries have moved security to the centre of the government’s response.
Monday will therefore provide an early indication of whether schools can begin returning to normal before Tuesday’s planned national mobilisation, or whether the disruption that affected hundreds of establishments last week will continue into a third week.
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BREAKING: Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exits when staff tried to put the fire out.
BREAKING: Another major school arson attack at Blaise Pascal High School in the French city of Rouen. The entire entrance is currently in flames. School staff can only stand and watch it burn. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/CZ8h1aDO3U
