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‘This is state violence’: Paris students rage at politicians and heavy-handed policing

Before dawn on Tuesday outside the Lycée Sophie-Germain in central Paris, hundreds of teenagers dragged wheelie bins, metal barriers and shopping trolleys to build a barricade outside the front door of their secondary school. Climbing to the top of the piles of bins, pupils held banners calling for more funding and greater equality in French schools. But they were also protesting against French riot police, who have been accused by human rights groups of using disproportionate force against children in what is fast becoming the biggest youth protest movement in decades. “Everyone hates the police,” chanted a group of 15- and 16-year-olds. At least 215 teenagers, 715 police officers and 85 teaching staff have been injured in clashes in recent days, according to the government. “We’re teenagers with wheelie bins, and the police have heavy weapons, it’s totally mismatched,” said Livia, 17, who was studying theatre at a lycée in northern Paris and did not want her real name published. “The police are extremely violent in France. This is state violence and it’s horrible seeing police allowed to target children. It’s important to remember this is institutionalised violence, it’s planned and deliberate.” Ten investigations into possible police brutality are under way after injuries allegedly involving the use of police weapons, including one 15-year-old who lost his hand, another who lost his eye and a boy whose jaw and teeth were shattered, leaving him, as his mother said, barely able to eat with a straw in hospital. “The policing is catastrophic, people have been mutilated by weapons – one boy has lost an eye – it’s horrible,” said Lily, 17 (not her real name), who was studying social sciences in her final year of school and demonstrating for more funding in what she called a discriminatory education system that left poorer children behind. “My parents support me being on the barricades and at the protests. They’re worried about the policing, but they said they’d come and get me from the police station if I was arrested.” Teenagers nearby held up cardboard signs protesting against the use of teargas and the deployment of riot police. “A state that gasses high school students is a weak state,” read one banner. “Gas rapists, not children,” said another sign in reference to calls for tougher laws against sexual violence. Another banner read: “Not here to riot.” The unprecedented protest movement that began outside one school in a low-income Paris suburb has spread across the country, taking the government by surprise. Hundreds of high schools have been barricaded and forced to close as pupils protest against teacher shortages, crumbling buildings and overcrowded classes. The justice ministry said 5,060 people had been arrested ⁠since the protests began, 87% of them minors. More than 1,800 people had been prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, the ministry said, without specifying the crimes. It said 790 cases had been dismissed. The government said 24 schools had been burned or ransacked. “In more than 20 years of teaching, I’ve never seen protests this big,” said one teacher at Sophie-Germain high school who planned to join the Paris demonstration on Tuesday afternoon. “The students in central Paris have shown a great sense of solidarity with those in the Paris suburbs who face much worse conditions in their schools. There’s a feeling of solidarity and generosity between teenagers that flies in the face of the notion that we live in an era of selfishness. No one knows how long this will go on for.” Tens of thousands of students, trade unionists and parents were expected to march in support of the protests across France on Tuesday afternoon, including in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and Bordeaux, with riot police on alert. Isabella, 16, said she had the backing of her parents, who work in film and music. “Young people have been teargassed for doing nothing but trying to express their opinion,” she said. “Everybody told us that school was the great leveller, but today that is not the case at all. A teenager in the banlieue [suburbs] of Paris is never going to have the same opportunities as a student from the city centre. That’s why we’re here today.” Lionel, 17, who was in his final year at school and hoped to study English at university, said: “The aim isn’t to riot or smash things up, we just want to protest peacefully.” Teenagers also chanted songs against Marine Le Pen, the far-right, anti-immigration candidate in the 2027 presidential election, who is high in the polls as Emmanuel Macron steps down after a decade in office. Many teenagers were worried about the election. “We’re also protesting against the growth of the far right,” said Aislinn. Justine, 17, who had been at the barricade since before dawn, said she hoped the protest would continue and grow into a “massive” movement. “For years, there has been a mental health crisis among young people in France and anger at rundown schools and the stresses of the education system. We need the government to listen to us and make radical change.” Maya, an 18-year-old sports science student, had spent two days on a barricade at her university building in Bobigny in solidarity with school students, and joined the Paris protest march on Tuesday. She had attended high school in Drancy in Seine-Saint-Denis outside Paris, in a school she said had mould on the walls, not enough chairs for class and absent teachers who often were not replaced. “It’s only when we spoke to other students at university who came from different types of schools in the countryside or city centres that we realised our experience was so different and that there was a real injustice to the conditions we had to learn in,” she said. Julie, 46, a self-employed parent of two high schoolchildren from Levallois, in the west of Paris, had joined her husband to accompany her sons to the Paris march. She said: “We’re here to support our children but also to protect them from what is going on with the police and the violence we’ve seen with the police these last few days. We’ve seen our own child teargassed many times in front of his school … it’s unbelievable.” Students’ names have been changed.

State parliament elects Germany’s first far-right speaker since second world war

Alternative für Deutschland has become Germany’s first far-right party to secure the position of speaker of a regional parliament since the second world war. Tobias Rausch, a former estate agent, was elected in the first round of voting on Tuesday in Saxony-Anhalt. He won 48 out of the 82 votes cast. Later in the day, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, part of the AfD’s more extreme wing, was elected as Rausch’s deputy. The AfD, which is classed as “rightwing extremist” by the eastern state’s intelligence agency, won nearly 44% of votes in elections last month, dealing a hammer blow to Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and his centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Rausch’s election to the role of president of the parliament – and its speaker – took place at the inaugural gathering of members in the state capital, Magdeburg. Twenty-nine voted against Rausch and five abstained. The AfD parliamentary group holds 39 seats, narrowly short of an absolute majority. Five politicians from the BSW, a small leftwing party that echoes the AfD’s stances on Russia and immigration, had already said they would vote for Rausch. Tuesday’s result means that four other MPs voted for the 35-year-old in the secret ballot. The willingness of politicians to break the “firewall” – a moral agreement among other parties to shun the AfD – gives the party a chance of being able to form a government in the state – a feat it had looked unlikely to pull off. This would be even more of a historical watershed in postwar Germany. The BSW’s support for Rausch came after the party’s founder, Sahra Wagenknecht, declared it was time to do away with “firewall idiocy”. The party’s deputy leader, Christian Leye, said the “firewall is not working” and the votes of nearly 44% of electors could not be ignored. “We need an intelligent way of dealing with the AfD and that means dealing with the content of their programme instead of a firewall,” Leye told German media. It was not immediately clear who was behind Tillschneider’s election because the BSW had said it would refuse to vote for him. He received 44 votes. As the architect of the AfD’s “radical” manifesto, he is lined up to become culture and science minister in the state. He has referred to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as “a real man with a sound set of values” and accused immigrants of “streaming in here in masses … wanting to squander our money”. Tillschneider is a scholar of Islamic studies who has described Islam as a “fungus” growing on the “German oak”. His family emigrated from Romania to Germany in the 1980s. In his acceptance speech, Rausch promised to represent all voices and “take different opinions seriously and to try to take decisions in a transparent way”. He was applauded by his own parliamentary group and the ranks of the BSW. The other MPs did not respond. Rausch was one of the key figures in a nepotism scandal over AfD MPs employing family members in parliament. He denied claims that several of his siblings and a brother-in-law were working in the state parliament but confirmed he was employing several players from the football club where he is a member. He is a close ally and confidant of Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate, who is positioning himself to take over as leader of Saxony-Anhalt. He has yet to say which parties or politicians have agreed to cooperate with the AfD, only that “negotiations are going well”. The AfD claims to be courting members of the CDU to break the firewall, a claim CDU leaders deny. The BSW says it will support an AfD-led parliament only if a nonpartisan figure is appointed to lead it, a position the AfD rejects. Siegmund has until December to form a government. Opposition MPs raised alarm over the breaching of the firewall. “Whoever has invested a representative of extremist and anti-constitutional party with this office will bear responsibility for the consequences,” said Green MP Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, to loud applause. The result of the Saxony-Anhalt poll, along with two other regional elections in September, has piled huge pressure on Merz, who pledged on taking office in 2025 that he would halve the AfD’s support by boosting the economy and reducing immigration. Instead, the CDU’s support has more or less halved and that of the AfD has surged to 30% in national polls. Before the vote, Eva von Angern of the leftwing Die Linke party and the longest-serving member of the Saxony-Anhalt parliament, drew parallels between Rausch’s election to the post of speaker, and Hermann Göring’s use of that role in the Reichstag in the 1930s to facilitate Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. She claimed that the negative consequences of the AfD’s win in the state were already being felt in lower tourist numbers and teachers withdrawing job applications.

‘No more Viktor Orbán’: EU plans 15-year probation period for new member states

The European Commission wants to ensure there is no repeat Viktor Orbán among the next generation of EU member states, as it set out plans to prepare for the bloc’s enlargement into eastern Europe in the next few years. In an interview with the Guardian and other European newspapers, the EU commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, outlined proposals for special safeguards to protect the bloc from leaders who could flout democratic values and hold hostage decision making, a pattern of behaviour exemplified for many by the former Hungarian prime minister. “No more Viktor Orbán,” said Kos. “We have to have quicker mechanisms than only article 7 [a sanction that allows a member state’s voting rights to be suspended] if the newcomers would go against the rule of law, democracy or our values.” Under the plans Kos published on Tuesday, any new EU member state would face a 15-year probation period, during which they could be stripped of voting rights or EU funds for breaching basic democratic values or loyalty to the EU, the principle of sincere cooperation. The plans would have to be agreed by EU member states. The EU treaty’s article 7 permits member states to remove voting rights from a rogue member state for a “serious and persistent breach” of democratic values. But this so-called nuclear option has never been triggered, despite lengthy discussions about democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary, under previous governments. The ultimate sanction was never taken, largely because the two central European allies used their veto power to protect each other. Under the new proposals, the threshold for suspending voting rights – or another punishment – for breach of democratic standards, would be lower. An EU official said: “This is a big innovation and an important message to citizens in more enlargement-sceptical countries that we have a very strong framework even if something went wrong after enlargement.” But officials acknowledged the time-limited safeguard would eventually expire. “If this [safeguard] would be unlimited, we would … have the situation where we have first and second-class members,” Kos said. The call for stricter safeguards comes amid new momentum in EU enlargement, with Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine all identified as frontrunners. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 injected new life into EU expansion, an issue which had long been moribund. Ukraine and Moldova filed applications to join the EU days after the Russian attack, a step that jolted life into EU accession efforts in the western Balkans, a region of 17.4 million people, where Russia and China are vying to gain influence. The EU’s existing 27 member states must agree unanimously to admit new member states, with scepticism notably high among French and Czech voters. Nevertheless, Kos said she believed enlargement was politically possible. “Member states also understand what is at stake,” she said, pointing to the contest for influence in eastern Europe and the Balkans. She named Russia and China as “external disruptive forces, who are after our candidates”. Describing enlargement as “our strategic interest”, she said: “If we are not able to integrate our neighbourhood, somebody else is coming [and] weaponising them against us.” As an example, she said Russia had “invested millions” trying to deter countries from a European path, citing elections in Moldova, an EU candidate country, and Armenia, which is seeking closer EU ties. China, on the other hand, she suggested, uses its economic clout as an investor to influence countries. EU officials hope to open negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova on two negotiating areas of EU law next week. Specifically, these are the “clusters” – thematic groups of negotiating files – for internal market and competitiveness, a vast swathe of the EU rulebook covering economic and monetary policy, tax policy, research and media. Kos said it was “much too early to speculate” on whether a country at war or with a frozen conflict on its territory could become an EU member. She confirmed that Ukrainian grain farmers would not get EU subsidies while facing restrictions on the EU market. Officials said Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe and a vital supplier to Africa and the Middle East in prewar times, had a different scale of production to EU member states. EU leaders will discuss the ideas next week, when they will confront difficult choices. In order to avoid gridlock in a potential EU of 35 members, governments will be invited to waive veto rights on issues such as taxation and sanctions policy – and accept they may not always have a European commissioner in Brussels. Attempts to shrink the size of the European Commission in the past have run into opposition, notably from Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon treaty in 2008, in part because they objected to the loss of a permanent Irish top official. Ireland voted in favour of the treaty the following year, after EU leaders pledged the EU executive would continue to have one commissioner for each member state.

Norwegian princess Märtha Louise and husband sue ex-friends for ‘betrayal of trust’

The Norwegian princess Märtha Louise and her husband, the American businessman Durek Verrett, are suing several former members of their inner circle for defamation over what they described as a “calculated betrayal of trust”. Court documents filed in Los Angeles on 14 September claim the former friends and colleagues took “private access once afforded to them and weaponised it”. The accused include “former intimate partners, trusted business associates, a family member”. The documents allege that information including “confidential communications, disputed accusations and claimed insider knowledge” was used against Märtha Louise, Verrett and his company, Ohana, in what the couple describe as a “coordinated series of devastating public attacks”. The compensation claims total in excess of $80m, the newspaper VG reported. The legal action comes during a particularly challenging period for the Norwegian royal family. King Harald died in August aged 89, to be succeeded by his son, Haakon, who is Märtha Louise’s brother. Harald’s sister, Princess Astrid, died aged 94, two days after attending his funeral in September. At the same time, the royal family has been embroiled in several scandals including revelations about Queen Mette-Marit’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Her son Marius Borg Høiby was found guilty of two counts of rape in June. The queen, who has pulmonary fibrosis, underwent a lung transplant in the same month. Märtha Louise and Verrett have been the subject of multiple headlines in recent years. In 2023, before marrying Verrett, who describes himself as a sixth-generation shaman, the princess renounced her royal duties to focus on the couple’s alternative medicine business. Last year they starred in a Netflix documentary about their lives, Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story. The papers, filed to Los Angeles county superior court, state that the case was prompted by a “calculated betrayal of trust” and mention the “recent loss” of the late king. The alleged “incessant misconduct” was said to have started years ago, but “continued and escalated” in 2025 and 2026. “During that period, plaintiffs experienced significant medical and personal circumstances, including Verrett’s serious kidney failure, dialysis treatment, health deterioration and recent kidney transplant, as well as Princess Märtha Louise’s recent loss of her father,” the papers state. “Although plaintiffs would ordinarily have preferred to devote this period to their health, family, grief, and recovery, the timing of this filing is governed by applicable legal deadlines. Plaintiffs must proceed at this unfortunate time to preserve their claims and protect their rights arising from defendants’ publications and conduct in 2025 and 2026.” The lawsuit says the accused people, “far from being distant critics reporting from the outside”, were “at one time in the inner circle of Verrett and Princess Märtha Louise”. It adds: “They had been welcomed into Verrett’s private life, family relationships, communications, client-related affairs and business operations through relationships of intimacy, trust, confidence, and professional responsibility.” The couple’s US lawyer Richard Roth told VG: “Our clients’ reputations have been judged by the public for years. Now the facts will be tested in a court of law.” Court documents list two future hearings for the case in December. The palace and representatives of the couple have been contacted by the Guardian for comment.

What do we know about death of anti-plague institute worker in Russia and is there a wider risk?

After a 28-year-old lab technician died last week reportedly after an accident at an anti-plague research laboratory in Russia, we take a look at what we know about the incident. What has happened? The exact details remain unclear but reports from Russia have suggested Darya Shipilova, an employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, died on 2 October, two days after becoming unwell at work. According to Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, Shipilova died from “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”. However, there are other accounts: Alexey Tsydenov, the head of the neighbouring Buryatia region, initially said Shipilova had died of plague, before editing his social media post to say she had “possibly” died of the disease. Russian authorities have denied this to the World Health Organization (WHO), stating: “No case of this dangerous disease has been recorded in the city of Irkutsk, Russian Federation.” If it is the plague, what are we talking about? We are talking about a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, typically found in small mammals and the fleas that feed on them. It is the same organism that was behind the bubonic plague or “black death” that swept Europe in the 14th century. However, the bubonic form is different from the pneumonic plague that some have suggested caused Shipilova’s death. The former is more common, results in swellings called buboes and is spread by the bite of infected fleas, whereas the latter is lung-based. Pneumonic plague has a higher mortality rate and can be spread between people. How might Shipilova have ended up with pneumonic plague? One report in the media is that Shipilova was admitted with the disease after returning from Thailand, while another is that she became infected after breaking a test tube in the laboratory. Rospotrebnadzor has denied any such accidents have occurred at the institute. How concerned should we be? It is worth noting that the plague is not a disease of the past. “There are a few hundred cases of plague reported each year globally usually in geographically restricted areas, particularly in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – although there are a small number of cases in the western United States, central Asia, Mongolia, etc,” said Dr Malick Gibani at Imperial College London. That might not seem reassuring, but we no longer have to rely on medieval medicine. Dr Simon Clarke at the University of Reading said: “Unlike many viral respiratory diseases, plague is caused by bacteria, and antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones and aminoglycosides work well against this pathogen if administered early enough and are often given prophylactically, post-exposure.” However, Prof Brendan Wren at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said there were multi-antibiotic-resistant strains emerging, “and if the laboratory is working on such a strain, then treatment options may be limited”. There have also been reports that almost 200 people with whom Shipilova may have had contact are now under medical observation, and that quarantines have been imposed in a number of hospitals. “Isolation and monitoring are sensible strategies,” Wren said. Prof Alice Hughes at the University of Melbourne added the incubation for pneumonic plague was only one to three days and, as yet no one has shown symptoms. Prof Ian Jones at the University of Reading also offered reassurance. “This case here seems like a rare lab accident and is unlikely to go much further.” However, Clarke said there were still unknowns. “Until more details emerge, it is difficult to assess whether this represents an isolated case, an occupational exposure, or evidence of wider transmission,” he said. The UN health agency’s spokesperson Christian Lindmeier has said the risk to others is low. “The WHO initial risk assessment from the information available estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region,” he said. What happens next? Dr Zania Stamataki, an associate professor of viral immunology and academic lead for containment level 3 laboratories at the University of Birmingham, said the control systems used in the UK for hazardous organisms work, meaning laboratory-acquired infections are rare. But, she added: “They are not impossible, and this is why an incident warrants a full account of what happened. That account matters beyond Russia.” Other experts also stressed a need for transparency. “I think it’s important that we see how this pans out, and ideally, there’d be good communication between the public health authorities and the wider global health community,” said Gibani. “I think this emphasises the need to be aware of ongoing outbreaks of serious bacterial pathogens and highlights the need for investment in biosecurity, particularly for preventing biological risks,” he added. “This could include developing medical countermeasures like better diagnostics or vaccines.”

How dilapidated are French schools and how bad is inequality in the education system?

Hundreds of French high schools have been barricaded by teenagers and forced to close and hundreds of people have been injured amid clashes with police in the biggest youth protest movement in decades over the state of French lycées, where 15- to 18-year-olds are taught. School students say the education system is riven with inequality, that many buildings are in disrepair, class sizes are too big, and there are not enough teachers or funding. The French prime minister has promised to address what he called “legitimate” complaints, including on class sizes, long hours, dilapidated buildings and teacher provisions. So how bad are French high schools and what are the main problems? Is the French education system blighted by social inequality? Yes. A child born and schooled in a deprived neighbourhood in France has less chance of escaping their socioeconomic background than in most other developed nations, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Éric Charbonnier, a French education analyst at the OECD, said there was a marked gap between the performance of the most advantaged and disadvantaged school students in France. “And often disadvantaged students are in disadvantaged schools,” he said. This has raised issues of the quality of learning being delivered and higher absenteeism of teachers. Teachers’ unions and sociologists have said children in France are often segregated by their background, postcode and income, with a direct impact on education outcomes. Are French high school buildings dilapidated and rat-infested with collapsing ceilings? Some are, namely in certain cities and low-income suburbs. Videos filmed by students and teachers have shown leaks, scurrying rats, holes in walls and ceilings, broken toilets and not enough chairs or tables, meaning teachers have to carry them from classroom to classroom. Some children said they had to learn in class while leaks were pouring into buckets, or move desks to avoid getting wet. Many school classrooms experienced temperatures over 35C (95F) in the heatwaves of last May and June. Estimates in recent years have pointed to thousands of French schools at all levels, both primary and secondary, in need of repair. These include many 1960s school buildings. French regions are responsible for upkeep of high school buildings, but have asked for higher budgets from the government. A senate report has advised that billions need to be spent in the coming years to renovate and repair schools, as well as to address the impact of the climate crisis. Are class sizes bigger than other comparable countries? Yes, and often in urban areas. Charbonnier said: “There are an average of 29 students in French language lessons, compared with 26 across the OECD. However, this average masks substantial differences – particularly between large cities and rural areas.” Teachers and school students in Paris and its suburbs this week described many high school classes of 36 pupils or more, but in some rural areas it can be fewer. Figures from the French education ministry show class sizes have increased in recent years. Are school days longer in France? Yes. “In terms of number of instructional hours, France really has more hours than most of the OECD countries,” Charbonnier said. This is true of primary and all levels of secondary education. Teaching is also squeezed into shorter periods, with 36 weeks of school per year, fewer weeks than the OECD average. High school pupils at barricades have complained of regularly having school days that run from 8am to 6pm, with many gaps during the day. Teachers said this was due to timetable challenges after changes to the baccalaureate that allowed for more individual choice of subject combinations. The French government has undertaken to review the length of school days. Are absent teachers not replaced, leaving pupils without key classes, even in exam years? Yes, sometimes. The education ministry has acknowledged that about 10% of teaching hours across the year are not delivered, for various reasons, and that it is urgent to fix this. The education union SNES-FSU estimated that at least one teacher was lacking in more than half of all public middle schools and high schools at the start of the September school year. On the barricades, protesting students said there were more absent teachers not replaced in schools in low-income areas. In a question to parliament last year, the MP Bastien Lachaud, from the radical-left party La France Insoumise, asked if the government could confirm 2019 estimations by the parents’ organisation FCPE that school students in Seine-Saint-Denis outside Paris, one of the poorest areas in France, missed 20% of their teaching hours because absent teachers were not replaced – amounting to almost one whole year of missed schooling over a lifetime. In a response, the education ministry said it could not confirm that estimation but said an increasing number of absent teachers were being replaced. Unions said non-teaching staff could also be lacking, including school nurses and support staff for students with a disability. Does France spend less money on secondary education than its European neighbours? No, France actually spends more than many other countries on high schools for children aged 15 and 18, but analysts question how the French government is spending its money and for what outcomes. For example, teachers’ middle and end-career salaries are comparatively low. Charbonnier said: “France’s expenditure on upper secondary education [lycées – or high schools] is 28% higher than the OECD average, while its spending on the first levels of education, including pre-primary and primary, is 11% below the OECD average.” He said the reason for France’s higher spend on high schools included its large provision of costly vocational programmes, which nevertheless often lack recognition even within France.

Schools blockaded as tens of thousands of protesters take to streets in France

Nearly 90,000 students, staff and parents have taken to the streets in cities across France as protesters blockaded hundreds of high schools in a nationwide day of action against long hours, missing teachers and crumbling classrooms. The French interior ministry said 86,000 people took part in marches in cities including Marseille, Nantes ⁠and Lyon on Tuesday morning, with up to 40,000 more expected to join the largest demonstration, in Paris, later in the day. The demonstrations come after a fortnight of protests that ⁠began in the capital’s northern suburbs before snowballing across the country. They have been marred by frequent and often violent clashes with riot police that have left hundreds injured, some severely. While many protests have been peaceful, some demonstrators have set dustbins on fire, destroyed bus shelters and thrown projectiles at police, who have responded with batons, teargas and riot-control rounds. Twenty-four schools have been burned or ransacked since the start of the protests, according to the education ministry. At least 715 police officers and 215 teenagers have been wounded, according to government figures, while 6,100 people have been arrested, almost all minors. More than 1,800 are being prosecuted, 1,483 of them under 18, the justice ministry said. The national union of lycée students said 1,800 of the country’s 3,700 high schools were blockaded or had been closed for the day on Tuesday, although some local education authorities attempted to move classes ‌online. Students on the marches held aloft smoke flares and placards with slogans including “Under our text books, anger” – a reference to a celebrated slogan from the May 1968 student riots, “Under the paving stones, the beach” – and “Schools with no money = country with no future”. Océanne, 18, was among the marchers in Marseille. “We just want to save our education and be educated,” she said, adding that she had suffered from absent teachers who were replaced either by “pointless substitutes” or not all. Many teachers were also demonstrating. In the western city of Rennes, Romain Dubourg said he and “about 30 colleagues” had “talked about the police brutality that we’ve witnessed, and decided to be there for our students if they need us”. Trade unionists were also on the marches, with the head of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, urging members to “protect high school students”. The Green party leader, Marine Tondelier, urged local officials and parents to wear white and “go and protect our children during demonstrations”. Trade unions and rights groups have accused the police of unnecessary force against the young protesters, with Amnesty International saying French authorities should “put an end to the disproportionate police repression seen in recent days”. Anne Savinel-Barras, the president of Amnesty France, said: “The images and testimonies widely circulated over the past week raise alarming concerns about the dangerous use of teargas, batons and policing techniques by the police.” The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said police had launched 10 internal investigations into allegations of brutality since the protests started. On Monday, a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off as protesters battled riot police in northern France. A 16-year-old lost the use of his right eye after he was seriously injured in the head on Wednesday during the blockade of a high school in Tours. The local prosecutor, Catherine Sorita-Minard, said the wounds were “compatible with the impact of a defensive bullet of the blast ball type”. In another incident, a 14-year-old lost most of his teeth on Monday when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him at close range during a protest north-west of Paris. “His jaw is sealed shut, he can no longer speak and he eats through a straw,” his mother told reporters. The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has ordered his ministers to tackle the students’ core demands which include ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8am to 6pm school day, and repairing ‌ageing buildings. But the protests, seven months before crucial presidential elections to choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron, have piled pressure on a government trying to reduce a ballooning budget deficit amid mounting investor concern over France’s mountainous debt and weak economic growth. The government has accused the radical-left La France Insoumise party of encouraging and even orchestrating the movement after numerous LFI MPs attended school blockades. The party’s veteran leader and presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has strongly supported the protests, while urging non-violence.