HIBAPRESS – Agencies
Around 400 high schools across France were closed on Friday due to ongoing student protests for a week, during which dozens of staff were injured, while police arrested approximately two thousand people, according to officials.
The protests began last week in the Paris region before quickly spreading across the country, where final-year high school students blocked their school entrances, while confrontations erupted between some protesters and the police.
French Education Minister Edouard Geoffroy stated that "the high school student movement has become a hostage to highly violent fringe groups," adding that around 400 out of the 3700 high schools in the country were expected to be closed on Friday.
For his part, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he had asked public prosecutors to hold parents responsible for the damages caused by their children during the protests and to oblige them "to pay for the repairs."
Darmanin told "RTL" radio that about two thousand people have been arrested and detained by police since the start of the protests, noting that "90 percent of them are minors."
Students are demanding improved study conditions, saying that study hours are excessively long and that schools suffer from unsuitable conditions, including high temperatures inside classrooms and frequent staff absences.
The government acknowledges that the students' complaints are legitimate but rejects the violence accompanying the protests.
