French riot police stormed the marble-halled Sorbonne University early on Saturday, pushing out about 200 students occupying the historic institution, some for three days, to protest a government jobs plan.
At least 80 helmeted police officers rushed the landmark institution to dislodge students, some holed up in a classroom barricaded behind desks, chairs and debris.
The evacuation came hours after student occupiers hurled ladders, chairs and other large objects from windows of the building on Friday night and protesters outside egged them on.
Police acted on a demand from the rector of the Paris Academy, which runs the university, moving in at 3.45am local time, police said.
Two people were injured in the ordeal, a student who fell and a photographer hit by a projectile, a statement by Paris police headquarters said.
LCI television reported that scores of students who fled the Sorbonne broke windows of a fast-food restaurant. Twenty-seven were arrested, it reported.
The disturbances were part of snowballing protests over a new jobs measure that is posing a major test to the government. Up to 600 students were reportedly in the Sorbonne on Friday, joining a sit-in that began on Wednesday. The university was forced to close.
Numerous students told The Associated Press that the movement was not over.
The mass occupation at the Sorbonne, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, the Left Bank student neighbourhood, was part of a larger movement by students, along with the country’s powerful unions, trying to force the government to withdraw the jobs measure that will make it easier for companies to fire workers younger than 26.
The government hopes the flexibility will spur employers to hire young people, safe in the knowledge that they will be able to get rid of them if necessary.
Critics say it will offer younger workers less job security than older colleagues and undermine France’s generous labour protections.
Police moved calmly in a block through the marbled and columned halls of the Sorbonne, founded in the 13th century, entering from a back door. They punched through the boarded-up classroom and blocked projectiles with their shields.
The majority of students gathered in an inner courtyard under the famed dome of the centuries-old university, lining up, choir-like, on the steps of a chapel at one end. They were surrounded and moved out the main entrance of the university without force but with sprays of tear gas.
”I was afraid before they came,” said Alexandre Eliguler, one of the occupying students who said they knew police would move in. But, he added: ”Their reaction was rather cool and they pushed us calmly to the exit.” He said students will not be dissuaded from their protest, which will continue ”starting tomorrow”.
When police arrived, protesters decided to stick together ”as a symbol”, said a third-year student in the building since Wednesday. Fearful of compromising her studies, she identified herself only as Elodie.
”Everyone tried to be hyper-responsible of the place because we know it is our national patrimony,” she said.
She and other students said the situation degenerated when hundreds of others joined the core group of about 80 occupiers on Friday. Police cited damage to some classrooms.
The demonstration reached a pitch late on Friday with protesters hurling ladders, chairs, a fire hydrant and other objects from a window toward helmeted police outside. Police responded with tear gas.
A school administrator, Nicolas Boudot, said the protesters wanted to turn the university into ”a battlefield”, not only against the jobs measure ”but against all of the social problems” France faces.
In Tours, 200km south-west of Paris, several hundred students moved on to tracks at the railway station, stopping trains for three hours on Friday, the SNCF rail operator said.
The main students’ union said 45 colleges of France’s 85 universities were hit by strikes, though Education Minister Gilles de Robien dismissed those figures as ”lies”. His ministry said eight universities were totally strikebound and that 26 others were affected to various degrees.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has made tackling sky-high youth unemployment a top priority. However, the furor over the job contract has further eroded confidence in the government — and may dent De Villepin’s ambitions for next year’s presidential elections.
”It’s about our future, and we are determined not to give up,” said Elisa Penisson, a 21-year-old undergraduate majoring in French literature at the Sorbonne.
Students have said they will continue occupying university buildings until the government withdraws the measure — pushed through the Lower House of Parliament without debate, causing a fury. It passed its final hurdle on Thursday and could take effect in April.
Sorbonne philosophy professor Bruno Haas said he’d given classes to a ”small core of dedicated students” at cafés since Wednesday’s closure of the site. ”They’re just hurting themselves by occupying the university. They need to study before they get jobs, anyway.” — Sapa-AP