Students who occupied the Sorbonne to make their voices heard between the two rounds of the presidential election occupied the university buildings on Thursday, April 14, during a day of rallies interspersed with incidents.

"All the occupation students have decided to leave," Baptiste, a second-year philosophy student at the Sorbonne and Unef activist, who participated in the movement at the AFP, told AFP on Thursday evening. interior of the building.

"It followed several pieces of news that were transmitted to us", and in particular "the fact that the next outings that we would make would result in police custody", "that there would be a gendarmerie intervention from 10 p.m.", and that "we no longer had the presidency" of the university as an interlocutor, which "contributed to generating a lot of fear", he explained.

Very consistent police device in front of the #Sorbonne after 27 hours of occupation.



Access to the interior is now blocked by barriers around the buildings.



Several hundred people are inside.

pic.twitter.com/tBoeXI7GmK

— Remy Buisine (@RemyBuisine) April 14, 2022

"We left as a group and the police made a trap around us to take us to the sidewalk," he said.

Some of the young people, however, remained in the building, according to students.

A video was circulating on social media claiming that 40 students were still at the university, being held back by the police.

A police source confirmed to AFP Thursday evening that there were still students inside, without specifying their number or the reason for their presence.

>> To read: Report: at the faculty of Saint-Denis, the useful vote in the second round is not an option

Hundreds of students mobilize in Paris, Nancy or Reims

Outside, the police used tear gas on Thursday evening to disperse demonstrators who had gathered near the Pantheon for the reception and regularization of refugee students, not far from the Sorbonne, according to a journalist from the AFP on the spot.

Some formed small sporadic groups around the forces of order, which repelled them.

At midday, several hundred students, 400 according to the police headquarters, had gathered at the Place de la Sorbonne to participate in a general assembly with the students inside, but were blocked by a CRS cordon. .

The students at the windows had thrown objects such as trash cans or furniture, AFP noted.

The CRS had pushed the young people back into the square, causing a crowd movement and throwing tear gas, without causing any injuries.

Ongoing tensions against the #Sorbonne with the use of tear gas by the police towards several hundred demonstrators.

pic.twitter.com/Sm2vaZPSA3

— Remy Buisine (@RemyBuisine) April 14, 2022

Since Wednesday, hundreds of students have been mobilizing in Paris, Nancy or Reims, to protest against the result of the first round of the presidential election and to alert on ecological and social issues.

At the Sorbonne, a general meeting was held on Wednesday, which was attended by hundreds of young people and after which a number of them – between 60 and 100 according to students – decided to stay.

All of the sites of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (about ten, including that of Tolbiac) were "closed to students but open to staff" on Thursday, according to the communication department.

"Young people are faced with a false choice"

A few streets away, at Sciences-Po Paris, some 150 students blocked the entrance to the school at 27 rue Saint-Guillaume on Thursday.

Banners read: "No quarter for fachos, no fachos in our neighborhoods" or "No to the extreme right".

"The courses scheduled for today on this site have been switched to distance learning. The other Sciences-Po sites remain open and operate normally," Sciences Po told AFP.

"We are here mainly to fight the far right, because today we are frightened by the percentage of votes Marine Le Pen got in the election," Sarah Bonvalet-Younès told AFP. , President of Unef Sciences-Po.

"Young people are faced with a false choice, two options which in both cases are harmful to them", added Baptiste, 22, student in 3rd year, union member at Solidaires Sciences-Po.

Around 3:30 p.m., 30 to 40 far-right activists armed with "pickaxe handles, umbrellas and hand gassers", attacked the students still present, who ran away uninjured, he indicated.

"The blockade of Sciences-Po has just been evacuated by us", tweeted later the Cocarde Étudiante, showing in a video young people removing banners and barricades.

With AFP

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