‘I am still traumatised’: French police accused of brutalising minors

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.

“They are losing a generation,” said Ainoha Pascual, a lawyer at the Paris Bar. “The government is implementing a strategy of terror. 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.

‘I am still traumatised’

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.

“I am still traumatised. 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.

“Within this social movement, this is unprecedented, especially considering that these are all minors,” said Mathilde Lante, Enzo’s lawyer and member of the Collective for Legal Action (CAJ).

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.

In early October, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said there were “no instructions for restraint” given to police officers, stressing that the use of force had to remain proportionate. In early October, the Justice Ministry instructed prosecutors to pursue a rapid and firm response to violence during the protests, including considering parents’ civil liability for actions by minors.

Meanwhile, France’s police watchdog, the IGPN, has opened 36 inquiries into alleged misconduct. Nearly 6,900 people have been placed in police custody since the start of the protests, 86 percent of them minors, Interior Ministry figures show.

Such a tough stance seems to have only galvanised the protesters.

More than half a million people took to the streets over the weekend, about 100,000 in the capital Paris alone.

“We are too young to be taken seriously; we are grown up enough to be beaten up,” was one of the slogans on repeat.

On Saturday, police fired tear gas and stun grenades well before marches started, a move that critics said set the tone for what would become a tense day.

Police blocked roads to exit the square in Paris. Only a few narrow exit routes were left for people to leave the site. That meant that thousands were stuck and compressed, leading to fainting and panic attacks.

This is what experts call “la nasse”, or kettling, a controversial tactic in which officers encircle and contain demonstrators. It has long drawn criticism from rights groups over its impact on freedom of movement and the right to protest.

Allegations of police brutality over the years

The student-led protests ended up catalysing wider grievances in a country dealing with fiscal, political and now social crises. At times, the streets of Paris have been home to violence and vandalism.

On Saturday and Sunday, as night descended, groups of young people ransacked, set on fire and looted shops in riots.

“For the past three weeks, we’ve been hearing that ‘the police kill’ or ‘the police injure people’. And then, for the past two days, we’ve been asked, ‘What is the police doing?’ A very French kind of schizophrenia,” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Monday.

This is not the first time the police have come under fire.

During the “yellow vest” protests – a period of unrest that started in 2018 over diesel price hikes and morphed into a social movement in which demonstrators wore yellow vests – officers faced criticism over their use of force, with protesters suffering serious injuries from rubber bullets and stun grenades.

In June 2023, the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop in Nanterre triggered days of riots, reigniting debate over racial profiling and police violence.

Environmental activists have also accused authorities of disproportionate force, particularly during a 2023 protest against a water reservoir in Sainte-Soline, where clashes left dozens of demonstrators and police officers injured.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly raised concerns about excessive force and restrictions on the right to protest.

Paolo Stuppia, a sociology lecturer at Sciences Po Paris and co-author of the book Geopolitique de la jeunesse, believes tensions between protesters and police have worsened under French President Emmanuel Macron.

“What was once reserved for the suburbs or autonomous activist groups is now being applied to everyone,” he said. “There is a climate of mistrust between protesters and police, and it is growing because police repression now affects far more people.”

‘French-style’ crowd control

Pascual, the lawyer, argued that the severity of police violence is closely linked to the use of crowd-control weapons that can cause permanent, life-changing injuries. Rubber-bullet launchers and explosive grenades have been at the centre of controversy over police tactics in the country.

“This is truly what we call ‘French-style’ crowd control – are very specific and involve the use of weapons, including weapons described as non-lethal, but which, in reality, are capable of lethal force,” she said.

Interior Minister Nunez suspended the use of stun grenades after a teenager lost his hand. But before Saturday’s marches, he said they could be used in cases of “urban violence”, adding that they were “never used when things are going well”.

On Saturday, they were used extensively.

Al Jazeera journalists at the scene saw police fire tear gas and stun grenades repeatedly, well before the march had started.

Pascual questioned whether the use of force was effective in restoring order, arguing that de-escalation could help rebuild trust between police and demonstrators.

“When you see videos of police officers deciding to put down their shields and remove their helmets, what do you see?” she asked. “The protesters opposite them stop and applaud. In France, we don’t do that.”