French police brutality against high school students

This French video from daily Le Monde says about itself (translated):

Shocking images of high school students arrested by police in Mantes-la-Jolie

Images of arrests of dozens of high school students in Mantes-la-Jolie were broadcast on social networks on December 6th [2018].

They show rows of dozens of students, kneeling with their hands on their heads, under the supervision of helmeted policemen armed with batons and shields.

A total of 153 people were arrested in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), Thursday, December 6, according to the prosecutor of the Republic of Versailles, Vincent Lesclous ….

The arrested people, mostly students [of the lycée Saint-Exupéry], are suspected of “participation in an armed crowd”, said the city commissioner Arnaud Verhille, claiming to want to “interrupt an uncontrolled process.” In the Yvelines, a total of 189 young people, aged 12 to 20 years, were placed in custody, according to the prosecutor of Versailles.

Images of the arrests were broadcast on social networks. They show rows of dozens of students on their knees, their hands crossed behind their heads, under the supervision of helmeted policemen armed with batons and shields. Some are lined up, forehead against a wall.

It looks like the French Macron government is moving closer to the methods of fascist dictator Pétain and his ideologist Maurras, both praised by Macron.

Translated from (‘centrist’ ‘Christian Democrat’) Belgian daily De Standaard today:

French people are dismayed about the police action against protesting students. 153 students from a secondary school in Mantes-la-Jolie, an hour’s drive from Paris, were ordered to kneel down by the police and keep their hands above their heads or behind their backs.

The police detained the students on Thursday as a reaction to their protest against educational reforms in France. According to the French Minister of the Interior, there were violent conflicts with the police, as a result of which a group of 122 young people were taken into custody. According to the minister, dozens of young people had sticks, baseball bats and tear gas. …

Pupils in about 280 secondary schools in France protested Thursday again in imitation of the ‘yellow vests’. A major problem for the pupils is Parcoursup, a system that determines whether students can continue studying at universities. The software is not working properly yet, which makes for bad blood in the youth.

While filming the students, the filmmaker says ‘this is a good class’.

The actions of the police officers are condemned on social media. Benoît Hamon, former Minister of Education,

Hamon was then a left-wing critic of Prime Minister Valls, of the right wing of the Socialist Party. Hamon then beat Valls in the vote to become Socialist candidate in the 2017 presidential election. Later, he left the Socialist Party in disgust about its right-wing course and formed his own party.

wrote “This is not the Republic. French youth was humiliated.” The French politician Clémentine Autain finds it ‘frightening’ and ‘unacceptable from a human and democratic point of view’.