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The police have so far acted with relative restraint, IHT wrotes...

IHT was asking in its yesterdays edition..

What's next for the protesters?

The French government's decision not to rescind its disputed labor law risks radicalizing the protest movement and plunging France into a new, more dangerous phase of disturbances, students, labor unionists, opposition politicians and sociologists warned Friday.

With labor unions planning another day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations Tuesday, unauthorized protests by students have already begun multiplying across the country - a clear change of tactics from traditional demonstrations and strikes, which are planned with police authorization.

For a second day Friday, decentralized groups of protesters disrupted traffic and invaded public buildings in Paris and other cities, prompting the riot police to intervene.

"They have opened a Pandora's box," said François Dubet, a prominent sociologist. "The decision of the government is an extremely dangerous one."

Student leaders called on students throughout the country Friday to rally in the main squares of their cities before a televised address to the nation by President Jacques Chirac.

At the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Friday evening, thousands of students crowded around a set of loudspeakers to listen to Chirac's speech. They greeted his announcement that he would enact the law with cries of "Resign, Chirac! Resign."

"In my opinion, things are going to explode, and it's going to hurt," said Jeanne Enaut, a 22-year-old economics student at the rally.

Before the Bastille rally, the police blocked exits from the Métro, apparently to prevent people who were arriving via the underground train from gathering there. Early in the day, riot police officers broke up an attempted sit-in at the square. Métro exits were also blocked at the Concorde and Champs-Élysées- Clémenceau stations, near the presidential palace where Chirac lives, because of student actions above ground, a police officer said.

Elsewhere, students blocked train tracks in Libourne, in the southwest, and invaded a post office in Montpellier, in the south. In the Mediterranean city of Marseille, two youths were injured when a motorist forced his way through a blockade across a road to a school campus, French news organizations reported. Incidents were reported in many other cities across the country.

High school students, who were less represented in the movement initially, have now joined the protests in droves. Karl Stoeckel, the head of the UNL, the national union of high school students, said Friday that he expected unauthorized protests to continue through the weekend, with youths occupying train stations, roadways and public buildings.

"Demonstrations and strikes didn't do the job, so we need to diversify our ways of protesting," he said.

Even students at the Lycée Victor Hugo in Paris's wealthy Marais neighborhood walked out Friday to protest the youth employment law. As Chirac prepared to enact the legislation, hundreds of Victor Hugo students gathered at the nearby Place des Vosges, one of Paris's most venerable squares, with banners and drums.

"Enough is enough," said Ulysse Mathieu, 16. "In the beginning only a few of us actually joined the protests. But now most students are mobilized. The government is really asking for it."

Zoë Miniconi, 16, predicted that the movement would grow - and grow more radical. "This could blow up in their faces, just like the suburbs last year," she said, referring to three weeks of rioting in immigrant suburbs across France last November.

Dubet, who is research director at Paris's School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences, and other political scientists warned that Chirac's decision to enact the law could widen the gulf between moderate students and a radical fringe of youths willing to use violence to make themselves heard.

If the movement becomes more radical and clashes with the police turn more violent, the protests risk drawing in youths from immigrant neighborhoods who were at the center of three weeks of rioting last autumn, the analysts said. Some youths from the poorer suburbs ringing Paris have joined the protests already, but those numbers could swell, the experts said.

Finally, they warned, if youths resort to the kind of violence that has broken out in some areas during the protests - smashing storefronts, battering cars and setting them on fire, attacking the police - labor unions that have acted as a moderating force on the young people could distance themselves from the movement for fear of alienating their members. This could amplify the radicalization.

"So far we have been in a phase of protest that in general was less explosive because there has been a strong coalition between unions and students," Dubet said. "If divisions emerge, it would create a very high risk of violence, chaos and police violence."

François Hollande, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, warned Friday that by signing the law Chirac would be "opening a major crisis."

For the moment, labor unions are planning to step up their resistance to the law. At the headquarters of the powerful CGT union, a spokeswoman said that France's five main unions would decide in coming days what "new forms of protest" would be pursued next week.

The unions and student organizations are hoping that strikes next Tuesday will exceed the mass protests of the past week, which brought more than one million demonstrators into the streets.

The police have so far acted with relative restraint, although students say tensions are increasing.

Anna Mélin, 22, a law student in the southern city of Toulouse, where students occupied a post office Friday, said the riot police had reacted "very aggressively" when she and others occupied a local government building, hitting students with their batons and arresting scores of them.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/paris.php