France suspends police stun grenades in student protests after teenager loses hand

The French government has ordered police to stop using stun grenades against high-school demonstrators, the interior minister announced on Wednesday, following an incident in which a 15-year-old protester had his hand torn away up to the elbow by a device fired by officers. The decision marks the most significant restriction imposed on crowd-control tactics since a wave of student demonstrations erupted in mid-September over insufficient funding for national education.

The injury to the teenager has become a rallying point for a movement that has already drawn hundreds of thousands of people into the streets across the country. According to officials, the hand was blown off as far as the elbow when a grenade was discharged at close range during the unrest. Images of the aftermath have circulated widely, sharpening public scrutiny of the police response to what began as protests over school budgets.

Eighteen internal investigations have been opened into allegations of police brutality since the student movement began, the interior ministry said. The scale of the probes underscores the seriousness with which authorities are now treating claims of excessive force, even as the government insists on maintaining public order during a protest wave that has shut schools and paralysed parts of the higher education system.

The suspension of stun-grenade use applies specifically to confrontations with protesting high-school students, a category of demonstrator whose youth has repeatedly complicated police decision-making. Officers must weigh the need to disperse crowds against the heightened vulnerability of minors, and critics argue that pyrotechnic munitions are simply inappropriate in that setting. The interior minister framed the measure as a necessary precaution rather than a judgment on individual officers.

The announcement came a day after nationwide demonstrations that mobilised students, teachers, union workers and parents in a broad coalition against education funding cuts. The Interior Ministry counted 250,000 participants, while organisers put the figure at close to 450,000 — nearly double the official estimate. Such gaps between police and protest tallies are common in France, but both numbers point to a mobilisation of considerable size.

Police arrested 488 people during Tuesday's demonstrations, and the ministry reported that 43 members of law enforcement sustained injuries. Those figures reflect an increasingly tense atmosphere in which clashes have accompanied many marches. The government faces pressure from two directions: from unions and educators who say officers are too heavy-handed, and from law enforcement representatives who insist that their ranks are under strain and under attack.

The disruption to the education system has been extensive. Of the roughly 3,700 high schools in France, 891 had lessons suspended either fully or partially on Tuesday for a variety of reasons — closures, blockades, or walkouts by staff. That means nearly a quarter of secondary institutions were affected in some way on a single day, illustrating how quickly the movement has spread from its initial flashpoints.

Higher education has not been spared. The French higher education ministry said around 40 percent of public universities and similar institutions experienced disruption on Tuesday. The combination of shuttered secondary schools and troubled universities suggests the protests are not a fringe phenomenon but a systemic challenge to an education sector that demonstrators say has been starved of resources for years.

The movement first broke out in mid-September, when students took to the streets to protest what they describe as a chronic lack of national education funding. In the weeks since, the protests have shown no sign of slowing, with each successive demonstration drawing large turnouts and, in many cases, confrontations with police. The government's decision to restrict stun grenades is widely read as a response to that momentum.

The interior minister's statement on Wednesday is also a signal to a watching public. In France, where protests over education, labour and pension reforms have a long history, the tools police use to manage crowds are closely debated. Stun grenades and dispersal devices have previously attracted criticism from rights groups who warn that they can cause severe injuries when deployed near densely packed crowds, particularly when minors are present.

For the teenagers at the centre of the protests, the injury to the 15-year-old has had a profound symbolic effect. The loss of a hand has transformed an argument about budgets and classrooms into a visceral debate about the price of dissent. Organisers have increasingly linked their demands for funding to wider complaints about the way the state responds when young people make themselves heard.

Still, the government's move is unlikely to settle the dispute. The 18 internal probes will take time to conclude, and their findings may determine whether individual officers are disciplined. Meanwhile, the underlying grievances over education financing remain unaddressed, and protest leaders have signalled they intend to keep demonstrating until concrete commitments are made.

France now confronts a familiar dilemma: how to balance the right to protest with the safety of both demonstrators and police. Wednesday's suspension of stun grenades in school protests is a concrete step, but the deeper question — how a generation of students frustrated by underfunded schools and a heavy-handed state response finds its voice peacefully — remains very much open.