Miko Ludoviko

🇫🇷 French police have left protesters with injuries that human rights lawyers told outlets compare to those seen in conflict zones, as a student uprising over crumbling schools and the cost of living enters its fifth week. Over Saturday and Sunday alone, French outlets StreetPress, Index and ViolencesPolicières(dot)fr collected several hundred videos and testimonies. Cases they documented include: 🔸 A 17-year-old in Saint-Étienne whose hand was torn off by a police grenade 🔸 A 17-year-old girl in Mulhouse who lost the sight in her left eye after being hit by a tear gas grenade 🔸 Protesters in Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg and Besançon beaten with batons and kicked while on the ground, including one held in a chokehold France's police watchdog has opened at least 36 investigations into police violence against high school protesters. Christophe Calvao, president of the Paris Young Lawyers' Union, denounced "an increasingly systematic use of crowd-control measures that would normally be reserved for much more serious situations." Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said police "must be able to use all intermediate weapons," and on Tuesday vowed to "step up" for the next mobilization. France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said his party and unions know how to keep marches peaceful by deploying hundreds of volunteers, adding: "We could at least expect police to do something other than fire indiscriminately into the crowd." Melenchon also noted that most European countries ban such grenades, and that Nuñez suspended them only to reinstate them "not even 48 hours" later. 🎥 Edited by @samivanderlip. (Compilation of videos circulating online).