Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Clashes with police erupted during a protest by student and trade union groups on the Place de la Bastille in Paris on the evening of October 8. BFMTV aired footage of the protest.
Law enforcement officers are using tear gas to disperse the crowd. Initially, police blocked off the square to prevent the march of demonstrators from passing. Some protesters began throwing stones and other objects at the police. Protesters are attempting to erect barricades.
Additional gendarmerie units have been deployed to the area. Authorities have urged residents to avoid the Place de la Bastille area and use alternative routes.
Mass protests by schoolchildren, dissatisfied with teacher shortages, overcrowded schedules, and the poor condition of educational institutions, have been taking place across France since September. Some of the protests have been accompanied by riots. By October 4, protesters had vandalized or set fire to 24 educational institutions, and another 400 to 500 had temporarily closed due to safety threats.
To disperse demonstrations, police use tear gas, batons, and special ammunition. On October 6, law enforcement officers in Paris used strobe shields for the first time against school protesters, whose bright flashes can trigger epileptic seizures. According to French authorities, at least 215 students and 715 police officers have been injured since the protests began.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticized the French police's actions against protesters. She claimed that law enforcement officers were "crushing" and "kneading" their own children, while the Élysée Palace was completely unresponsive. The diplomat described the dispersal of the demonstrators as a "battle on ice" between police and unarmed children.
Russia's Permanent Representative to the OSCE, Dmitry Polyansky, stated that French President Emmanuel Macron is attempting to silence those who have taken to the streets in an attempt to reach out to the authorities, exercise their legal right to freedom of peaceful assembly, and express their civic position.
'Unbridled Violence': School Protest in France Escalates into Street Fights
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Andrey Bulkin
[Regnum] The protests sweeping France continue to gain momentum. More than a quarter of a million demonstrators have taken to the streets, and in some cities, actual street battles have broken out between protesters and police.
What began as a student protest in support of striking teachers in a Paris suburb has escalated into the largest national crisis in decades. Nearly 900 schools have been closed, police have used tear gas and water cannons, and more than 6,000 people have been detained, most of them minors without criminal records.
| Yes, but after this they will have a well-deserved criminal record. Win-win! |
The causes of discontent are well known and have been documented repeatedly: a shortage of teachers, dilapidated educational buildings, and an unfair system for assigning graduates to universities. However, these grievances alone do not explain the unprecedented scale of demonstrations, accompanied by outbreaks of violence across the country.
| No. But the sheer glee of Moslem colonists and Antifa/Black Bloc anarcho-communist syndicalists at their mayhem does explain it. Especially when one notes now much of the poor condition of the schools results from previous misbehaviour by the same parties, eating up the funds that would have fixed the problem. |
"It is now clear that we are witnessing a historic protest movement and that we have a difficult task ahead of us in resolving this crisis," Sophie Venetitai, head of the SNES-FSU teachers' union, told Le Monde.
What began as typical French strikes and riots has escalated into violent clashes. Protesters are attacking police, who are responding with gunfire, the streets are filled with smoke, shop windows are being smashed, and cars are being set on fire.
A tear gas grenade shattered 14-year-old Eden's jaw and knocked out numerous teeth. After surgery, he is unable to speak and eats only through a straw.
| Why was he there and what was he doing when the police so rudely interrupted him? |
"It's shameful, it's horrible, it's cruel, it's disgusting, it's vile—I could list a whole list of words. They're dealing with children. And what are the children demanding? Simply better educational conditions," the victim's mother told the AP.
The officer who fired the grenade launcher has been detained, charged and faces up to 15 years in prison.
In Lens, a 15-year-old boy lost his hand when a police officer threw a stun grenade. "His life was stolen. He's 15 years old, how can you treat children like this?" his mother told BFMTV.
| The policeman’s life has been stolen, too. But the policeman was trying to protect the school, why the boy intended to throw a grenade. This seems a bit imbalanced. |
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced that the type of stun grenade that allegedly injured the young man will no longer be used against high school students.
In Tura, a 16-year-old boy was partially blinded by a specially designed munition used to disperse a crowd. After these incidents, protesters only became more violent, and they increasingly carried placards with slogans like "Resources, not stumps" and "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
According to the government, 215 teenagers and 89 school staff members, as well as 761 police officers, were injured. Approximately 6,600 people were detained, almost all of them minors, including 1,500 under 18. Police estimate the total number of protesters at approximately 250,000, while demonstrators themselves claim 450,000 participants nationwide.
Critics say law enforcement was less lenient toward the teenagers than they were toward the earlier striking farmers, who doused government buildings with manure and blocked roads. Lawyer Alexis Bodelain, representing more than a dozen detainees, described the police actions as "unbridled violence."
He believes the actions of his clients and their supporters are being "politicized at an incredible rate." "For all of them, this was one of the first times they took part in a demonstration, gathering in a public place to voice demands they considered legitimate," the lawyer noted.
The protests have gained widespread support: adults—parents, elected officials, trade unionists, and ordinary citizens—are joining the schoolchildren. The movement has expanded beyond its initial scope and become a nationwide social protest.
According to one of the protest leaders, 15-year-old Manes Nadel, the movement has spread "like wildfire." "An unprecedented number of schools have joined us," he told CNN, adding that the French Ministry of Education is "stunned by the crisis."
Parents are forming human chains between teenagers and police officers. "The police are there, my son is here, I'm staying in front to protect him," the mother of one of the Paris protesters told a Le Monde reporter.
Against this backdrop, Saint-Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko stood out, placing himself between the opposing sides. In a viral video, he faces the police, shielding the youths standing behind him and shouting, "Stop!"
"The high school students who were on the street could have been my children. <…> It's my responsibility to be there for them," Bagayoko said. In an interview with RT, he placed the blame on Emmanuel Macron : "It was President Macron who said that the law is on the side of the police. By saying that, he pushed them to action. And that's his responsibility."
The larger the protests become, the more their agenda blurs and the more alarming the underlying tendencies they reveal. In some places, participants have been seen performing rap tracks en masse with references to terrorist attacks and Adolf Hitler. One such incident occurred at a high school in Beaugency (Loiret department), another at a church in Soullane (Vendée department).
The track's lyrics mention terrorists Mohamed Merah and Salah Abdeslam, who committed attacks in France, and effectively glorify their crimes as a source of inspiration. Tellingly, the track is performed not by the children of migrants, but by native French members of Generation Z.
Part of the text can be translated roughly as follows: "Like Mohammed Merah, I dodge the cameras; Bataclan, I shot him in the eye - manhunt; Salah Abdeslam - brother; There's a reward for me in hell."
Arthur Denouvo, president of the Life for Paris association, created after the attacks of November 13, 2015, asked the director of the high school to invite him to speak with the students performing the track in the video: “I would be happy to come along with other Bataclan survivors, look these teenagers in the eye and explain to them their mistake.”
A video has also circulated on social media in which a young man, identified as a student at the Lycée Honoré de Balzac in Mitry-Mory (Seine-et-Marne), says: “There are only ten of them, in the name of Allah we will kill them!”
Conflict at this lyceum erupted after the tragic suicide of a 17-year-old student in January 2026. Her family and sympathetic students accused the school administration of inaction in the face of the bullying the girl suffered.
The teenager who called for reprisals was referring to the small number of employees remaining in the building and called for them to be dealt with as revenge for the death.
All this suggests that the righteous anger of schoolchildren risks escalating into a much larger civil conflict. The infiltration of extremist slogans into the protest agenda creates grounds for further legitimization of violence and, in general, makes them part of a socially approved protest, which could lead to a real social upheaval.
Meanwhile, demonstrations are already spreading beyond the country's borders: in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Germany, and Austria, students are also mobilizing against similar challenges—underfunded education, overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of teachers, and rising tuition fees.
This isn't a single, coordinated movement, but a general wave of discontent sweeping across Europe. In Liège, police and protesters clashed, with at least 139 people arrested since October 1. In Italy, some schools in Turin and Rome are calling for "a French-style approach."
In Greece, students announced nationwide school protests. In Ireland, thousands of students took to the streets in Dublin demanding lower tuition fees.
The French government finds itself in a dire situation. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promises to present an action plan by the end of October, but with a massive public debt and a budget deficit exceeding 5% of GDP, he's unlikely to be able to offer anything meaningful. The government lacks the resources to make concessions and satisfy even part of the protesters' demands.
"After 10 years of Emmanuel Macron's education policies, it was to be expected that high school students would be angry. One can only wonder why they didn't express their anger sooner," said Elizabeth Allen-Moreno, secretary general of the teachers' union SE-UNSA.
Under the current circumstances, maintaining control over the situation without resorting to either repression or complicity is becoming nearly impossible. And the main risk isn't that the protests won't subside, but that the line between the righteous anger of some and the extremism of others is becoming increasingly blurred—both in France and abroad.
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