تشکیلات خارج کشور حزب حکمتیست- نبردی نویدبخش برای آیندەای بهتر در خیابانهای فرانسە. متن به زبانهای فارسی و انگلیسی

On September 21, the first spark of the current protests by French school and university students was struck at “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry” High School in the deprived district of Créteil, in the Paris suburbs. The protests have taken on new dimensions with each passing day, fueling a crisis that has spread from Paris across the country.

Upon returning to school, students discovered a severe shortage of teachers and other staff. The protests quickly spread to hundreds of schools across Paris, its suburbs, and other cities, fueled by a shared and growing sense of frustration. The protests followed a teachers’ strike on September 17, which was prompted by staff shortages, including a lack of both teachers and support personnel.

The growing pressures resulting from the Emmanuel Macron administration’s cuts to public education—including overcrowded classrooms, a lack of support staff, dilapidated school buildings, inadequate health services, unbearable heat in summer and extreme cold in winter, and compressed curricula—combined with glaring class divisions, particularly visible in the Paris suburbs, have intensified and fueled the spread of the protests. Reuters, quoting a teacher in Marseille, reported that his class has 37 students, and that students sometimes have to go to other classrooms to find a chair and desk.

Millions of students and their families face growing economic insecurity and severe poverty, while the prospect of an increasingly uncertain future weighs heavily on them. France has a long history of major student protests that have helped bring about profound transformations in French society and, at times, across the European continent. The student protests of May 1968 constituted one of the largest and most influential student movements in European history, with repercussions extending well beyond France. The current wave of student mobilization across schools and universities may represent the most significant and cohesive protest movement of its kind in France in nearly six decades, since the events of May 1968.

The protesters are acutely aware of how the government has “generously” allocated billions of Euros to the war in Ukraine, including support for its continuation and escalation, as well as the expansion of military capabilities and the reinforcement of nuclear forces—all at the expense of the public, who are subjected to economic austerity. Yet this same government appears indifferent to the fate of millions of people. It shows little willingness to safeguard their lives and security or to improve public education and social welfare unless compelled to do so by sustained public protest.

French police have turned the streets into a battlefield with protesters, a large portion of whom are children and adolescents under 18. These protests have caused many young people who seek a better future to join the school and university students in the ongoing street protests. So far, hundreds of schools have been shut down. Over 7,000 people have been arrested, of whom, according to media reports, 85 percent are children and adolescents under 18. As a result of the hostile confrontation by the brutal French police, a large number of students and some teachers have been injured, and the hand of a 15-year-old boy was amputated as a result of the police using stun grenade, which is a weapon of war.

Massichla, 18 years old, said to a reporter during a march in the city of Lille: “They have an army, they have the police. They have power. But we have a massive crowd.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s fascist National Rally and a presidential candidate, has expressed strong hostility toward the protesters, arguing that the parents of young demonstrators should bear the costs of repairing public property damaged during the protests. She has also called for stricter measures and further restrictions should she be elected president in the next term.

In response to the protests, the French government has made a concession, pledging to recruit 3,000 substitute teachers. However, this concession falls far short of meeting the demands of students and schoolchildren. The fundamental issue remains the lack of funding needed to address the crisis, which would require an investment of several billion Euros– an expenditure the government is unlikely to approve in full and may be willing to cover only in a very limited measure.

The French protests have shown the way to the students of Belgium, who suffer from a shared pain, and protests have now begun in several Belgian cities. It should be emphasized that Europe as a whole is experiencing this profound crisis, which has worsened since the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Amid the protests by French students, Iran’s Foreign Ministry has adopted a humanitarian posture, voicing its opposition to the repression of protesters. This is the same ministry representing a regime with a long and bloody record of crimes, repression, and killings on university campuses and in the streets of Iran. The discredited Foreign Ministry seems to have forgotten that the regime’s security forces murdered Kian Pirfalak in his family’s car, in front of his own parents. It has also forgotten the killing of numerous children during the Bloody Friday massacre in Zaahedaan, whose fourth anniversary was commemorated in recent days; the killings of Nika Shaakarami, Saarina Esmaailzaadeh, and dozens of other victims whose dreams were never allowed to come true by the guardians of capitalism and ignorance. According to reports by ophthalmologists, more than 580 cases of eye injuries or the blinding of young female and male protesters constitute yet another example of the brutality inflicted on young people by Iran’s Islamic capitalist regime. The words of the notorious Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was then commander of the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran (NAJA), still ring in our ears. He declared that he would “crush” the students. We have not forgotten how protesting students were brutally thrown from the upper floors of three-story university dormitories. Video footage stands as evidence of these atrocities.

Trade unions, including the CGT, have joined the student protests, at times positioning themselves between schoolchildren and the police to protect the former from police violence and help de-escalate confrontations. Meanwhile, a coalition of France’s largest trade unions—the CFDT, CGT, FO, UNSA, and FSU—is preparing to launch a broader and more forceful general strike on Thursday, November 5, in opposition to the 2027 budget bill and its austerity measures. Their demands include an end to the freezing of wage increases, pay rises that keep pace with inflation, and the protection of funding for education, public services, and other sectors across both the public and private economies. As trade unions become increasingly involved in these protests, whether as organized labor movements in their own right or through their role as the parents of the protesting children, they could become a powerful force in support of the student movement—a movement that reflects the deep class divisions and entrenched inequalities affecting the most deprived neighborhoods of French society.

The unity of these two powerful forces—both committed to resisting the French bourgeoisie’s assault on workers’ and their families’ living standards, as well as its attacks on education and social

services—is the most effective weapon available to society’s most impoverished strata, who have adopted “Long live the Paris Commune” as one of their battle cries.

We, at the Worker-communist Party of Iran – Hekmatist, while unconditionally supporting the ongoing protests in France, are impatiently looking forward to the realization of the goals and demands of the workers and students.

Victory to the protest movement of French students and workers!

Long live the Paris Commune!

Worker-communist Party of Iran – Hekmatist Abroad Committee

October 14, 2026