US President Donald Trump has blamed the violent student protests in France on the country’s migration policies, rejecting rioters’ claims that the unrest is driven by poor school conditions and teacher shortages.
On Tuesday, France saw the largest day of demonstrations demanding that the government of President Emmanuel Macron provide more resources and better funding for schools since the student protest movement began in mid-September.
Some 266,000 people took to the streets across the country, with 56,000 joining the march in Paris and major rallies also taking place in Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes, Lyon, and other cities, the Interior Ministry said. The organizers put the attendance at 450,000.
In some locations, including Paris, protests escalated into vandalism and clashes between demonstrators and police, who employed tear gas and batons to disperse the crowds. A total of 488 people were arrested on the day nationwide, according to the French authorities.
Teachers, parents, and rights groups have accused police of excessive force, with around 215 students injured over the past three weeks. They include a 15-year-old who lost his hand after reportedly picking up a police stun grenade and a 16-year-old who lost sight in one eye, allegedly after being hit by a rubber bullet. On Wednesday, the French government banned the use of stun grenades during the student protests. More than 6,500 people, mostly minors, have been arrested, according to AP.
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump insisted that “what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration,” rather than a dispute over schools, claiming that “Islam [wants] to take over a once great Country!”
France, which has been one of the main destinations for migrants in the EU in recent years, has a foreign-born population of 9.6 million, the second largest in the bloc after Germany.
Migration has also caused tensions elsewhere for Western European countries. More than 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta in late July, according to Reuters. At least 10,000 were reported to still be in the territory this week, straining local resources and prompting protests by residents.
Trump’s words were echoed by the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, who told Fox News that Washington would “always condemn lawlessness” and the violence in Paris, but argued that Europe’s “open borders” and “unchecked immigration” policies had caused “a level of frustration” to boil to the surface.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu rejected claims that the government had ordered “police repression” or that officers were being racist. He said “ultra violence” would not be tolerated, while promising investigations into what he described as “accidents” during the protests.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez insisted that the response by police had been proportionate in “almost all cases.” A total of 715 officers have been injured in the clashes over the past three weeks, he said. According to the Education Ministry, 24 schools have been burned or ransacked by demonstrators since mid-September.
Some student groups have called for new nationwide rallies to be held on Thursday.
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