Protests spread across France

Riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse crowds as the new school year brought nationwide student protests, which are also feeding into the presidential election campaign. More than 160,000 people were on the streets on Tuesday, 13 October, the fifth day of mobilisation, after three weeks of blockades and marches over teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings. Blockades of lycées and universities were still going on in some establishments on Wednesday morning, 14 October. One of the student organisations has called on protesters to join the gilets jaunes movement on 17 October. Teenagers in Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income area north of Paris, have shown reporters pictures of broken furniture, mould and leaking ceilings, and some have gone months without key teachers.

Injury figures and the government's response

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu gave injury totals in the Senate on Wednesday, 14 October, during questions to the government. He said 937 police officers and gendarmes had been injured since the movement began, 40 of them on 13 October alone. He also cited 149 Education ministry staff and 248 pupils, most of them hurt in what he described as urban violence. He warned about the situation in schools in these words:

We have 200 lycées where the situation is becoming entrenched with unprecedented violence.

Mélanie Vogel, head of the Ecologist senators' group, replied that the government was offering repression rather than answers to the students' demands. She called for an immediate and permanent ban on defence ball launchers (LBD) and grenades, and warned:

A state that fires on its children is a state that has already lost.

Lecornu reproached her for not condemning mortar fire aimed at classrooms, and accused some elected officials of stoking the unrest to win back the movement for electoral purposes.

Police conduct and complaints

The Côtes-d'Armor prefecture said in a statement that since 1 October police had fired eight LBD rounds, used tear gas and made 44 arrests. It argued that a minority was diverting the movement. Since the movement began, 7,950 police custody measures (gardes à vue) have been recorded. On Wednesday, 14 October, the Alliance Police nationale union, which represents officers, decided to file a complaint against the French state for endangering the lives of others. In a leaflet it described the instructions from police command as 'unclear' and 'contradictory'.

In early October, a 15-year-old boy had a hand torn off after a police grenade exploded outside the lycée Behal in Lens. The day before a press conference at the school gates, Marine Tondelier, leader of the Ecologists and a presidential candidate, denounced the repression as 'hors-norme' and said it used 'weapons of war'. Less than 48 hours after the incident, the interior minister announced that police would no longer use stun grenades in the context of the student movement.

The 'Bismillah' slogan online

The phrase 'Bismillah, c'est les ténèbres' (roughly 'Bismillah, it's darkness') has spread across social media and protest placards in France and Belgium. It began with messages on Snapchat, the app students use to organise blockades, sent by unknown senders, and one message then went viral on X. No evidence identifies the author, but online commentators suspect an undercover police officer trying to infiltrate blockade groups. Because 'Bismillah' means 'in God's name' in Arabic, pairing it with 'darkness' is nonsensical, and students have turned the phrase into a mocking slogan against the methods attributed to police. Activist Greta Thunberg, who showed support outside the lycée Paul-Éluard in Saint-Denis on Tuesday morning, used the phrase in a video for the collective Œil au Beurre Noir.

Beyond the classroom

Beneath the complaints about crumbling classrooms and missing teachers lies a wider fear about the future of a generation, from poorly paid and unstable jobs to unaffordable living costs. In Spain, mass housing demonstrations by young people in Madrid and Barcelona share similar concerns. British commentators have asked why young people in the United Kingdom, facing heavy student debt and housing costs, are not taking to the streets in similar numbers.