International
oi-Gaurav Sharma
US President Donald Trump has blamed immigrant Islam for fueling the unrest in France, saying that the protests by students are not over the state of education.
Trump wrote the comments in Truth Social as the number of participants nationwide passed 250,000, which is the largest turnout that the student, parents and teacher protests have seen since they began in early September.
Over 250,000 students, parents, and teachers protested deteriorating French education systems, focusing on infrastructure and funding; Donald Trump blamed immigrant Islam and mass migration instead.
Trump suggested that the protests represented an out-of-control mass migration that did not concern schools but reflected his view that Islam wanted to take over France.
The comments come as students block school entrances for weeks across France demanding that the government address the crumbling buildings, staff shortages, overflowing classrooms and lack of investment in the school system.
They began in lower-class areas around Paris and then spread throughout France to other cities and suburbs. Students demanded better maintained schools, and parents and teachers joined them.
Protests on Tuesday in several cities were generally peaceful, but there were clashes in Strasbourg, Lyon and Rennes, where police responded to reports of crowds throwing objects and setting fires by using tear gas.
French authorities have faced criticism of sending in riot police to campuses with student demonstrators, and student groups and human rights groups have raised concerns about the use of force against young people.
Protests have disrupted classrooms, but the number was unclear since student groups have said that two thousand high schools have been impacted while the education ministry said 891 schools were fully or partially shut.
Trump’s comments were part of his wider effort to promote immigration to Europe. Migration has long been a focus for conservative governments and right-wing groups, and his allies have used the unrest in France as a warning about the dangers of mass immigration.
For the protesters, the issues continued to be the state-run schools: aging buildings, staff shortages, poor infrastructure and low government spending.
