The China Mail - France braces for fresh student demonstrations as Macron calls for 'respect'

In an incident seemingly unrelated to the protests, police arrested a 14-year-old on Monday near Marseille after a middle school headmaster and a teacher were shot with a hunting rifle, wounding both.

Students have blocked entrances to hundreds of lycees -- high schools for children 15 to 18 -- since late September to rail against poor classroom conditions, with squads of riot police deployed and occasionally violent clashes erupting.

On Monday, some 130 of France's 3,700 lycees remained closed, according to the education ministry, which said that although "the number of school closures is falling... the violence is intensifying".

The ministry said eight members of teaching staff were injured early Monday, mostly in the Paris region and cities of Bordeaux and Lyon. The tally did not include the shooting in Aubagne near Marseille, which police were treating as a separate crime.

President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters at the Paris Motor Show, said the pupils' grievances would take time to address and urged restraint from protesters.

"These are issues that deserve time, consultations, discussion, and respect," Macron said, urging calm.

- Tuesday demonstration -

Macron's appeal went out ahead of nationwide demonstrations on Tuesday being promoted online by the far-left France Unbowed party fiercely opposed to Macron. They were to be followed on Saturday by wider public demonstrations against the rising cost of living.

Naila, a 17-year-old student in the city of Rennes, said she would participate in Tuesday's demonstration and hoped it would "converge" with the wider one on Saturday.

"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.

He added that the protesters -- many of whom were minors -- were "disturbed by the level of repression never before seen for a student movement".

One young protester lost a hand from a police stun grenade earlier in the protests, another lost many of his teeth from a teargas canister fired in his face at close range, and another lost an eye.

Rights groups and students have accused the police of a disproportionate use of force.

Several police officers and teachers have also been hurt, and on Monday 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.

The police have opened internal investigations into 24 allegations of brutality against demonstrators since the protest movement began last month.

More than 6,800 people -- largely minors -- have been taken into police custody, the justice ministry says.

- Extra teachers -

The protesting students have been blocking access to schools by piling dumpsters, bins and barriers at entrances, to complain about absent teachers, overloaded timetables, overcrowded classes and dilapidated classrooms, among other grievances.

Pupils on Monday blocked the entrances of schools in Paris, the southern cities of Marseille and Toulouse and the western city of Rennes, AFP reporters saw.

The government last week promised some 3,000 substitute teachers would be deployed in the coming days to replace absent staff at the 114 worst-affected high schools.

A government spokeswoman on Monday said they had started to be assigned.

The national students' union has dismissed the government's move as "crumbs" and is demanding a 10-billion-euro ($11-billion) boost for lycees.

However, some parents and students voiced concerns about all the classes being missed, with a few worrying the children were being used as pawns by opposition political parties.

Some parents pleaded for the teens to lift their blockades at Paris schools.

"The blockades are by their very nature undemocratic," complained one mother, who went by the pseudonym Gladys.

"It's shameful to block students who really want to study, by a movement they aren't part of," said Clara Juillet, a university student in Tours who has been unable to attend lessons because of the protests.

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D.Peng--ThChM