French student protests intensify alongside ‘yellow vest’ revolt

PARIS: Around 200 French high schools were blocked or disrupted Thursday by students protesting a raft of education overhauls, on a fourth day of action called to coincide with anti-government demonstrations which have rocked the country in recent weeks.

Dozens of people wearing face masks threw Molotov cocktails, torched trash bins and clashed with police in several cities during violent protests ahead of a call for nationwide demonstrations on Friday.

“The situations are quite varied, with total or partial blockages, barricades to control access, burning pallets,” an education ministry official told AFP.Although the students are demanding an end to testing overhauls and stricter university entrance requirements, they have seized on the momentum of the ongoing “yellow vest” protests against President Emmanuel Macron.

“We’re the ones who are going to eventually have to pay higher fuel prices,” said Ines, one of around 150 high school students demonstrating in the southern Paris suburb of Cachan.The “yellow vest” protests began on November 17 in opposition to rising fuel taxes, but they have since ballooned into a broad challenge to Macron’s pro-business agenda and style of governing.

The government announced Wednesday it would cancel planned increases in fuel tax due to take effect in January in a bid to appease the mostly low-income protesters from small-town and rural France.

“With the yellow vests as a pretext, we’re seeing all sorts of individuals joining with people demonstrating in good faith, including students, and this is leading to serious violence,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told BFM television.

At least two cars were burned outside a school in Mantes-la-Jolie northwest of the capital on Thursday, while a student was seriously injured by a rubber bullet fired by police in the central city of Orleans. The main farmers’ union said Wednesday that its members would hold demonstrations every day next week.

Two truck driver unions have also called an indefinite sympathy strike from Sunday night, while blockades at fuel depots have caused shortages in Brittany, Normandy, and southeast regions of France. France remains on edge after the “yellow vest” protests degenerated into some of the worst violence in decades in central Paris last Saturday.