Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined high school pupils campaigning for better learning conditions in France on Tuesday ahead of fresh nationwide demonstrations, with authorities and participants wary of further violence.
The 23-year-old, who became famous as a teen for school strikes to demand action on climate change, stood among pupils demonstrating outside a school at the heart of the movement in the capital’s largest suburb of Saint-Denis.
Thunberg arrived at the Paul Éluard high school, as lawyers in their robes formed a human chain to protect teens after numerous allegations of police brutality.
“Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us,” Thunberg told the AFP news agency.
The mobilisation, which is backed by unions and the far-left opposition France Unbowed party, was to include a midday march through Paris, along with marches in other cities.
“They’re not listening to us, so we’re going to them,” university student union l’Union etudiante wrote in a post on X.
More than 70,000 people took to the streets last Thursday in the last major event of a movement that started in late September.
French authorities had been hoping that the protests would start to ease ahead of half-term holidays.
“We should be at around…200 schools closed, which is fewer than last week,” Education Minister Édouard Geffray said on radio station France Inter on Tuesday morning, adding some near protest routes were closing to avoid damage.
In the Paris region, teenagers had blockaded the entrances to several schools before dawn.
In the southern city of Marseille, students slowly pushed dumpsters on wheels in front of their high school.
‘Aren’t being heard’
French students say they are determined to press the government to address the problems of too many absent teachers, dilapidated buildings, overcrowded class schedules and other grievances.
The protests since last month have seen teenagers pile up dumpsters and light security barriers outside hundreds of France’s 3,700 lycées for students mostly aged 15 to 18.
They have mostly been peaceful, but seen clashes occasionally break out with police.
The education ministry said eight members of teaching staff were injured on Monday, mostly in the Paris region and cities of Bordeaux and Lyon, in relation to the protests.
“Students aren’t being heard enough…not their proposals to authorities and elected officials,” a 19-year-old graphic design student in Paris, Leo, said on Monday.
He added that the protesters, many of whom were minors, were “disturbed by the level of repression never before seen for a student movement.”
Thousands of arrests
Authorities said fireworks fired through a tube injured two school workers in Reims, one school worker in a Paris suburb and a police officer outside a school in Marseille.
Tuesday’s demonstrations supporting the students were to be followed on Saturday by wider public rallies against the rising cost of living.
Naila, a 17-year-old student in the city of Rennes who said she would participate in Tuesday’s demonstration, hoped it would “converge” with the wider one on Saturday.
President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters at a car show on Monday, urged restraint from protesters.
“These are issues that deserve time, consultations, discussion and respect,” Macron said just months before elections to replace him.
More than 6,800 people, largely minors, have been taken into police custody over the course of the protests, according to the justice ministry.
Police have opened internal investigations into 24 allegations of brutality against demonstrators.
After last week’s nationwide demonstrations, the government promised some 3,000 substitute teachers would be deployed in the coming days to replace absent staff at the 114 worst-affected high schools.
The education minister said on Tuesday that 35% had already been assigned.
High school students are demanding a €10 billion boost in investment for the country’s lycées.