Europe 1 with AFP 12:39 p.m., April 15, 2022

From Wednesday to Thursday, students from the Sorbonne University in Paris occupied the premises to protest against the results of the second round of the presidential election, according to them disastrous.

The rally led to a few scuffles with law enforcement.

Students who occupied the Sorbonne to make their voices heard in the interlude of the presidential election left the university buildings on Thursday evening, while others were still there, after 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.

Students remained in the building in the evening

"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.

"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 that there were still students inside, without specifying their number or the reason for their presence.

>> READ ALSO

- Blocking Sciences Po Thursday: The Pen stances students who "should respect this democracy"

The police used tear gas

Outside, the police used tear gas in the 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 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.

A protest against the Macron-Le Pen duel

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 - had 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.

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.

Far-right activists attacked students

"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, a 3rd year student unionized 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 without being injured, a- he indicated.

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