The video captured the moment officers detained education reform protesters
Footage off French high school students line up on their knees with their hands on their heads looks like something you’d expect to see from a police state, but it is France.
The footage, which has since gone viral causing outrage across the country, show helmeted police officers armed with batons standing over terrified Franch students who like they about to be executed by a firing squad.
The video captured the moment officers arrested and detained education reform protesters in Mantes-la-Jolie in north-central France on Thursday.
The high school students had joined with the ‘Yellow Vests’ not to protest fuel tax hikes, but education reforms.
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Violence Policières (Police Violence) Twitter group posted the footage on Thursday evening, which garnered thousands of retweets by angry citizens claiming it resembled “execution [of children] by firing squad.”
The student teens, all unarmed, were on their knees – a far cry from the heavily armed officers.
“For me what happens in the picture is intolerable, regardless of the context,” one person noted.
Twitter users attacked the officers of “inhuman treatment.”
D’autres images de l’interpellation de dizaines de lycéens, aujourd’hui à Mantes-la-Jolie. pic.twitter.com/ghv8K91e7l
— Violences Policières (@Obs_Violences) December 6, 2018
On Twitter user added, “Next step the Guillotine?”
One hundred fifty-three people, mostly students, were arrested in Mantes-la-Jolie, according to officials.
As the situation with the protests escalated, police resorted to tear gas on the students.
Around 700 high schools in France were swept by protests, resulting in 400 of them closing, according to the National Students’ Union
Joining the yellow vests and the student protests, over one hundred ambulance drivers also protested in Paris Monday morning as President Emmanuel Macron faces a growing backlash.
French Paramedics blocked the Place de la Concorde near the National Assembly in central Paris, with many blaring their sirens denouncing government-ordered industry reforms, according to France Info.