France’s government has launched an unprecedented campaign of repression against high schoolers after a surprise protest movement kicked off in September. Students across France blockaded their schoolhouses, demanding that dire learning and sanitary conditions — including poorly insulated and crumbling school buildings that freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer, as well as excessively long schooldays, large class sizes due to a lack of teachers, and the competitive system of higher education placement called Parcoursup — be addressed by the government.

As the movement mounted over the past week, with the high schoolers joined by university students and workers, the government accelerated its violent response. Videos of students being beaten, tackled to the ground, and shot in the face provoked outrage that fanned the flames of the high schoolers’ discontent and brought larger sections of society into the movement in support of them. Particularly shocking incidents, like a story about a fifteen-year-old who lost a hand and a video of a fourteen-year-old girl being strangled while arrested, increased the anger. At the beginning of the week, the government banned protests outside of schoolhouses in many regions (a move currently being challenged in the courts). On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu closed all high schools until the end of the week, announcing disingenuously that the move was a chance to “allow for some internal democracy.”

Laurent Nuñez, the interior minister, told MPs on Wednesday afternoon that the police had arrested 6,629 people since the beginning of the movement but denied any “police repression” was at work. About 85 percent of those arrested are minors.