Paris students intensify protests over deportations

Hundreds of students and adults marched through the streets of Paris on Thursday
 to protest against the deportations of two school pupils, Leonarda Dibrani and
Khatchik Kachatryan. © Rachel Holman

High school students took to the streets of Paris in their thousands on Friday during a second consecutive day of protests against the deportation of foreign pupils, following the controversial expulsion of a 15-year-old Roma girl earlier this month.

Leonarda Dibrani was detained by police during a school trip on October 9 and deported to Kosovo along with her parents and five siblings – a case that has triggered widespread outrage and landed France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls in hot water. Critics have lashed out at the “inhumane” way Dibrani was treated.

Days later another student, 19-year-old Khatchik Kachatryan, was also deported, but this time to Armenia. He was enrolled at Camille-Jenatzy, a professional high school in northern Paris.

Taking to the streets to express their anger at the deportations, protesting students gathered at the Place de la Bastille in the French capital at around 13:00 (11:00 GMT) on Friday to begin a march to the Place de la Nation, about 2km east, amid tight security.

The protests had began the day before, when students obstructed the entrances to several schools in Paris, protesting in front of the gates.

According to the local education authority, 14 schools in Paris were “disrupted” by Thursday's protests. The high school student union UNL, however, said that demonstrations had in fact been held at more than 30 schools in the capital and its suburbs.