Paris, France — Enzo, 17, said a police officer grabbed his arm as another struck him from behind with a baton. With his head covered in blood, he was hospitalised and needed stitches. Eden, a 14-year-old, cannot talk right now.
His jaw was smashed after a police officer fired a tear gas grenade at his face in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumone. Mael, 16, cannot see from her right eye after being struck by a rubber-bullet launcher fired by the police. Since mid-September, when French high school students started revolting against the education system they say has failed them, police tactics have come under scrutiny.
Lawyers and protesters who spoke to Al Jazeera accused police of stirring violence and resentment, rather than seeking to de-escalate tensions. While authorities in France have defended the police over their actions as a necessity, violence against minors will deepen the gap between the state and its citizens, experts and lawyers say. Because when you maim someone, when you seriously injure someone, it means that that person, and indeed everyone around them, will not return to demonstrations.” Demonstrations over education have morphed into a nationwide protest movement that over the weekend saw violent clashes.
In the case of Enzo, videos verified by Al Jazeera show a peaceful crowd of teachers forming a chain in front of students. Police officers break through the cordon and, while advancing, use batons and pepper spray at close range. Screams of panic fill the air.
Instead of protecting us, they are attacking us,” Enzo said. According to his lawyer Elsa Marcel, Eden was sitting alone on a low wall looking at his phone, a few metres from the school protest, when three police officers approached him. Videos of the incident appear to show an officer striking the teenager with a baton before another officer fired a tear-gas grenade into his face.
Marcel said the shot was fired from about 1.5 metres (5 feet) away, and accused officers of leaving the boy on the ground without calling emergency services. His family has filed a complaint for attempted murder. French authorities denied that police were engaging in repression during the high-school protests, pointing to the hundreds of law enforcement personnel who had been injured.
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