Donald Trump has blamed French student riots on ‘mass migration’ and ‘Islam wanting to take over’ following days of chaos across the country.
The US president waded into the debate on his Truth Social account on Tuesday evening, claiming the situation in France has become ‘out of control’.
It follows days of protests in the country’s major cities as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest failing school conditions.
But many of the demonstrations have turned violent. Today in Paris, police were seen using tear gas and pepper spray to push back protestors who were spotted launching stones and rocks at officers in retaliation.
It came after the far-Left mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, who himself joined the riots, drew criticism for claiming that ‘violence can become legitimate at a certain point’.
Posting to social media this afternoon, Trump said: ‘What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.
‘This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country! President DJT.’
Staggering statistics released by France’s interior ministry this evening revealed that more than 6,100 demonstrators have been arrested since protests began last month.
Donald Trump has blamed days of protests in France on ‘out of control mass migration’ and ‘Islam wanting to take over a once great Country’
Hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of the country’s major cities in recent days to protest failing school conditions
A spokesman for the ministry, which earlier estimated that more than 250,000 people took to the streets to protest today, said: ‘There have been 6,100 arrests, 1483 of them minors, since the protests began three weeks ago.’
All were taken into custody for a variety of public order offences, from violence against public officials to vandalism.
At least 715 officers and 215 teenagers have been badly injured in clashes, the spokesman added.
Shocking images from Paris showed rioters, many donning balaclavas and masks, setting alight bins, letting off flares and climbing on statues this afternoon in chaotic scenes.
At the Place de la Nation, one of the city’s most iconic squares, local police officers told reporters that they are being repeatedly targeted by hoards of youths. Many protestors were heard shouting: ‘Everyone hates the police!’.
One officer said: ‘Gangs of youths are trying to attack us constantly.’
Such scenes are however far from confined to the streets of the French capital.
In Rennes, police were pictured using waters cannons in a bid to ease the chaos ensuing around them.
Meanwhile, French newspaper Le Parisien reported that some inciters are telling their Snapchat followers to ‘bring knives’ and ‘stab civilians in the crowd’ outside the Couffignal high school in Strasbourg.
Similar scenes were also replicated in southern French cities such as Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux.
It comes less than 24 hours after a 15-year-old schoolboy lost his left hand when a police grenade exploded in Lens, around 150 miles from Paris.
Footage from the scene showed several people tending to the young man as he lay on the pavement. His left hand appeared to be missing, with a bloody stump in its place.
Several people were heard screaming in the video. He was later seen slowly walking away from the scene.
Other reports claim he lost his arm up to his elbow but this has not been confirmed.
Protestors are calling for an end to the country’s substandard school conditions, with thousands complaining of missing teachers, overloaded timetables, dilapidated classrooms and buildings that cannot copy with rising temperatures.
A Paris protester called Carole, 17, said: ‘Classrooms are full of rats, and teachers are not always present – the conditions are terrible.
‘Students from ethnic minorities are also terribly – especially by the police. This is why we are out on the street.’
Figures from the political Left have been accused of encouraging riots in a bid to boost their vote, with a number of politicians joining protestors on the streets this week.
One of those today was Jean-Luc Melenchon, the France Unbowed hard-left presidential candidate, who previously accused the country’s current government of ‘steadily dismantling public services’.
Mr Melenchon has a serious chance of replacing Emmanuel Macron as head of state in 2027 when Mr Macron will be forced to stand down having spent two terms in office.
A Toluna Harris poll last week suggested that Mr Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, of the far-Right National Rally, would advance to next year’s presidential run-off, with Le Pen best placed to win.
Mr Bagayoko, the aforementioned left-wing mayor of the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, was another of those to join rioters in the capital.
He said he opposed violence but adamantly stood by the thousands of protestors causing chaos on the streets of France.
‘I stand by being on the side of my residents, and high school students are my residents,’ he said.
The French Greens, meanwhile, called on elected officials and parents of rioters to join in wearing ‘with white helmets, white armbands, white clothing, to go and protect our children in the demonstrations’.
Green leader Marine Tondelier spoke in front of a high school in Lens – the city where the teenager’s hand was blown off by a stun grenade on Monday – saying: ‘All political families together should have this concern to allow our young people, those who wish to do so, to express their demands in safety.’
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office has called for ‘peaceful’ gatherings, calling for a return to ‘a structured, legal and democratic form of opposition’.
He has also ordered government officials to tackle the students’ main demands, including ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8am to 6pm school day and the need for longer lunch breaks.
The government would also look at repairs needed to ageing school buildings, said Mr Lecornu, who demanded ministers send in their first proposals by the end of October.
But finding spare cash will be difficult.
The protests have piled pressure on a government trying to narrow a ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France’s growing debt pile, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push bond yields higher.
The yield on France’s ten-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5 per cent last week.
The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policy makers.
Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.
The head of the CGT labour union Sophie Binet has said its members would be there to ‘protect high-school students’.
Several unions have accused the police of using disproportionate force against the protesters.
The police have launched ten internal investigations into allegations of brutality since they started, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said late on Monday. He added that the police response has been proportionate in ‘almost all cases’.
‘The only response they’ve received so far is repression,’ Sigrid Gerardin, a Paris high schoolteacher, said of the pupils.
Felix Barney, a university student, described the police response as disproportionate. ‘It doesn’t have any sense to hit minors,’ he said.
The government has sought to address the grievances, while accusing hard-Left activists of having hijacked the protest movement.
The government is also pushing legislation to make those responsible for damaging public property pay for repairs themselves, instead of using public funds.
Mr Lecornu has said the draft law could allow compensation payments to be recovered from family allowances and housing benefits while ensuring a minimum income.
Union leader Ms Binet has said it would ‘end up targeting the most vulnerable families’.
The hard-Right National Rally (RN) party had an even firmer proposal. RN representative Sébastien Chenu, who is also the vice-president of the National Assembly, called for families of rioters to be punished if their children take part in these protests.
He said: ‘We must act using this lever of cutting benefits, we must go further and evict people from social housing if their child misbehaves.’
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
