France was bracing for nationwide demonstrations on Tuesday after union leaders vowed to join high school students who have spent two weeks blockading their schools over understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings. The planned demonstrations are a litmus test of the longevity of a protest movement that began last month in a single school in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread to hundreds of schools across the country. Some demonstrators have barricaded school doors, set buildings on fire and shot fireworks at police officers, though many protests have been peaceful.
Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the protests began and about 270 high school students and school staff have been injured, as well as nearly 470 police officers. The French education minister, Édouard Geffray, has called the protesters’ demands “legitimate,” but said student-led violence had gone too far: “No demand can justify such acts,” Mr. Geffray said last week. Others, including a major union of French judges and prosecutors and a prominent human rights group, have accused the police of using disproportionate force against students as young as 14.
The demonstrations have also heightened scrutiny of a far-left party, France Unbowed, whose leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, could make the runoff in next year’s presidential election, according to recent polling. Centrist government officials and far-right leaders have accused France Unbowed, which backs the protesters, of fomenting the violence — an accusation it denies. The students’ complaints include frustration at a state-run website that students must use to apply for higher education programs.
The site, called Parcoursup, has been called opaque and impersonal, in part because it has left tens of thousands of applicants waiting for months before learning if they have earned a place. Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, reporters for The Times based in Paris, cover the ongoing situation. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu sent a letter to several cabinet ministers, pledging among other things to fill vacant teaching positions, identify urgent problems with buildings, and make improvements to Parcoursup. That did not quell the protests.
On Monday, students demonstrated again at hundreds of schools across the country.
Fuente: New York Times Top Stories · Resumido por HeadlinesBriefing