1,500 minors face court in France's school revolt

France has suspended police use of stun grenades at high-school protests after a 15-year-old lost a hand, as arrests exceeded 6,100 and nearly 1,500 minors faced prosecution. ^[1][2][4]

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced the order on RTL on Wednesday, October 7, following the boy's injury near Lycée Auguste-Béhal in Lens on Monday. The suspension applies only to the high-school protest movement, rather than to policing demonstrations generally. ^[1][3]

The decision is a concession over police tactics during a movement that began with complaints about school conditions and has spread nationwide. It comes alongside a firm defence of the police and a push for criminal prosecutions and parental liability. ^[1][7]

The circumstances of the Lens injury remain unestablished. Nuñez said there was "a strong possibility" that the device involved was a stun grenade. Authorities have not confirmed whether the boy picked it up or was struck by it. ^[3][4]

The suspension will last "until we know exactly what happened", Nuñez said. That leaves open the possibility that police will be allowed to use the devices again at school protests once the facts are established. ^[1][3]

A suspension with a narrow boundary

The boy's mother told BFMTV that his hand had been amputated and that he had not tried to pick up a grenade. "His life has been stolen," she said. "He's a 15-year-old kid, how can children be treated like that?" ^[1]

A different account, reported by regional newspaper La Voix du Nord, said he picked up a police grenade. Neither version has been established by the authorities. François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, said roughly 200 protesters had thrown objects at police but declined to discuss the specifics of the injury. ^[4][8]

Nuñez said 18 investigations by the IGPN, France's internal police oversight body, were open. They would examine whether police action was proportionate, and were "not all for the use of intermediate weapons", he said. ^[3] These are weapons used to control crowds without firearms, such as stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. The inquiries will assess whether the force used was justified in the circumstances, including in cases involving those weapons. No timetable for their findings has been given. ^[3]

The cases under investigation include incidents in which a young protester lost multiple teeth and a student lost the use of an eye. Nuñez told parliament that 215 teenagers and 89 school staff had been injured since the protests began, alongside 761 police officers. ^[1]

Those figures describe a substantial toll on both protesters and officers. They do not settle how any individual injury occurred, whether force was justified in a particular encounter or whether an officer committed an offence. Those are the questions the investigations must answer.

Nuñez nevertheless rejected accusations of "police repression" as "excessive", telling MPs that officers "are not intervening if the protests are peaceful". Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said in a televised address on Wednesday night that police had no orders to "confront" protesters. ^[1]

Amnesty International France president Anne Savinel-Barras welcomed the suspension as "an important first step" but called for stun grenades to be permanently banned from all protest policing. "Protests should not be battlefields," she said. ^[1]

The rights organisation had already said that footage and testimony raised "alarming concerns" about police use of tear gas, batons and restraint techniques. Its October 5 statement alleged reckless discharge of tear gas grenades and serious injuries from rubber bullets, and called on authorities to protect children from violence and arbitrary detention. These are Amnesty's allegations, not findings from the police inquiries. ^[5]

The government has accepted that the Lens incident requires investigation and changed one part of its policing response. It has not accepted Amnesty's case for a permanent ban. An open petition on the National Assembly's platform seeking to ban weapons capable of causing mutilation at high-school demonstrations has passed 60,000 signatures. ^[3]

The children entering the justice system

More than 6,100 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began, according to Interior Ministry figures reported by France 24 and Al Jazeera. Most were minors, and most had no previous criminal record. A separate total reported by The Guardian puts arrests above 6,600, so the exact count remains unsettled. ^[1][2][4]

The age profile is consistent across the available figures. Amnesty cited an Interior Ministry count of more than 5,000 arrests by October 5, with children accounting for 85 per cent. The Justice Ministry told Time that 87 per cent of those detained were minors. ^[5][8]

These are arrest figures, not convictions. Nor do they describe how many children remain in custody. The available accounts give no total for minors released, cautioned or held in pre-trial detention. ^[2]

The prosecution figures are clearer. More than 1,800 people face prosecution, including 1,483 minors, according to the Justice Ministry figures reported by Al Jazeera. Children therefore account for nearly 1,500 of the cases already moving into the courts. ^[4]

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has asked prosecutors for a "firm criminal response and the imposition of civil liability on the parents of minors whenever possible", according to a statement he posted on X. ^[7]

That instruction places parents within the government's enforcement strategy. It does not establish that every parent will be liable, or that every arrested child will be prosecuted. Each case still requires a legal decision.

A further measure is approaching parliament. A bill nicknamed "casseurs-payeurs", or "rioters pay", is due for Senate consideration in late October. Amnesty gives the discussion date as October 27. ^[3][5]

According to Amnesty's account of the proposal, people taking part in a gathering that results in property damage could face financial liability of up to 10,000 euros without proof that they personally caused, contributed to or incited the damage. The measure is pending, not law. ^[5]

There is documented damage for the state to address: 24 schools have been burned or ransacked during the movement. But the proposed liability rule, as Amnesty describes it, would reach beyond those proved responsible for that damage. ^[1][5] That breadth deserves scrutiny before parliament grants it.

School complaints became a national confrontation

The movement began on September 21 at Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, following a teachers' strike on September 17. Its grievances included teacher and staff shortages, classes of 32 to 36 pupils, deteriorating buildings, overloaded timetables, stress over the Parcoursup university admissions system and heatwave conditions. ^[6][8]

Those complaints spread from the Créteil area to schools across France. Yet the demands remain local rather than national. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said: "One of the difficulties of this movement is that there are no national demands. It all started with local demands." ^[6][7][8]

That makes a national response harder to design. Replacing an absent teacher and repairing a building are concrete tasks. A broad promise to improve education will be judged against whether those tasks get done.

Tuesday, October 6 brought the campaign's biggest day, with at least 250,000 pupils, parents, teachers and unionists marching. Organisers put participation closer to 500,000. Most marches passed without serious incident, although some ended in vandalism and clashes with riot police. President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency cabinet meeting. ^[1][4]

By Wednesday, classes were wholly or partly suspended at 429 of France's roughly 3,700 lycées, fewer than on Tuesday. That is about 12 per cent of the country's high schools. Eighty university campuses, including Sciences Po in Paris, were blockaded in largely peaceful protests. ^[1]

The movement has also become a political dispute months before the presidential election to choose Macron's successor. The government has accused the radical-left La France Insoumise party of encouraging or orchestrating the protests after its MPs attended school blockades. Party leader and presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has supported the movement while urging non-violence. ^[1]

The government's accusation does not establish that the party organised the movement. The documented starting point remains local school grievances, which ministers now acknowledge require an answer. ^[6][8][1]

The next tests come this month

Lecornu said on Wednesday that the "anger of young people does not come from nowhere" and that France could not be "indifferent" to students' concerns. He promised an action plan by the end of October covering absent teachers, school renovation and the organisation of timetables. ^[1]

That gives the government a deadline for an education response while its policing response remains under investigation. The temporary grenade suspension supplies immediate restraint. The promised school plan will have to supply something students can recognise in their classrooms.

The next scheduled parliamentary step is the late-October examination of the damages bill. Unions have called further strike action for Thursday, while the government has given no deadline for the 18 police inquiries. ^[1][3][5]