Thousands of French high school students have launched protests across Paris, building barricades to block their own schools’ entrances, to show their opposition to aggressive government deportations of their classmates.
The uprisings were touched off by what many are calling the “inhumane” expulsion of a 15-year-old Kosovan Roma student Leonarda Dibrani, who was arrested in front of her fellow pupils while she was on a school field trip earlier this month after her family was denied asylum. She, her five siblings, and her parents were subsequently deported to Kosovo.
Protests swept more than 30 schools in Paris and the suburbs on Thursday, according to the high school student union the UNL, with the Paris education authority reporting 14 schools were “disrupted.”
Students blocked entrances to several schools with barricades and protests. The Guardian reports, “At one high school in Paris students piled green garbage cans in front of the entrance and hung a banner saying ‘Education in danger.'” A mass protest took place at Paris’s Place de la Nation, France 24 reports.
Some reports have emerged of clashes between protesters and police—who wielded batons and fired teargas.
“Everybody should have a chance. Everybody should have a job, work and have a family. When children try to achieve that, France refuses, and that is not my country,” said protester Romain Desprez in an interview with the Guardian.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
