Student Protests Spread as 13-Year-Old Arrested in Liège
Student protests across Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia region and neighbouring France entered their fourth day on Tuesday, as authorities in Liège announced the arrest of a 13-year-old accused of using social media to urge others to firebomb a school. The escalation has brought thousands onto the streets, prompted hundreds of arrests, and sharpened a debate over whether the decentralised youth movement is spontaneous or being manipulated.
The Liège prosecutor’s office said that since 1 October there had been 33 administrative arrests and 20 judicial arrests, 17 of them involving minors, according to RTBF. The 13-year-old was deprived of liberty and brought before the Liège courthouse after posting appeals inviting other youths to arrive with jerrycans of petrol to set a school alight.
A Movement Spreading on Two Sides of the Border
The protests began in Belgium’s Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB) on Thursday 1 October and have since spread from Liège to Charleroi, Mons, Arlon, Tournai and Brussels. They mirror a larger, week-long wave of lycée blockades in France against teacher shortages, ageing school buildings and overcrowded classes.
On Monday alone, Liège police reported 30 arrests, at least 18 officers injured and four police vehicles damaged, with rioters causing damage around the Place de la République Française; officers deployed a water cannon and tear gas. In Charleroi and Gosselies, 25 minors were arrested, while 15 suspected rioters — 10 of them minors — were detained in Arlon, as detailed in VRT NWS’s live coverage.
Also on Monday, in the Walloon town of Hannut, 15 children were lightly injured when fireworks landed on a primary-school playground during a protest march. Police described the fireworks as accidental; the mayor of Liège called it deliberate. One suspect was arrested.
The movement in Liège showed no sign of abating on Tuesday, with schools blocked in Brussels and the Liège region and a heavy police presence deployed around the Place Saint-Lambert, where some of Monday’s violence had occurred, per RTBF’s live blog.
Why Students Are Protesting
Behind the headlines about arson and arrests lies a set of specific grievances that RTBF traced to a contested austerity decree passed in June by the FWB parliament. The “décret-programme” includes a 10% increase in the teaching load of upper-secondary teachers without salary compensation, cuts to budgets for school supplies and free meals, a less generous sick-leave regime, and tighter end-of-career arrangements.
Students also object to a rise in the “minerval” enrolment fee from 835 euros to 1,194 euros for 58% of students, and to the planned end of the 12-euro annual TEC public-transport subscription for 18–24 year-olds. From February, the classic subscription rises to 180 euros, and the express subscription to 384 euros for those under 26.
“Our classes are full. Yet we have to work 2 extra hours for the same pay. That means we cannot guarantee our students a good education,” said Laurence Moreaux, a Dutch teacher at the Athénée de Waha in Liège, in comments carried by VRT NWS.
A Political Battle Over ‘Manipulation’
Francophone Education Minister Valérie Glatigny (MR) has condemned the violence and called on students to return to class. “Go back to your schools, focus on your learning,” she said, warning that pupils who miss class would have it counted as an unjustified absence, RTL Info reported.
Glatigny said she was particularly worried by what she described as students being “instrumentalised by radical movements and people outside the establishments,” which she linked “probably” to the extreme left. She has defended her record, saying no measure reduces student supervision and pointing to 25 million euros released to support the most vulnerable pupils and 1 billion euros mobilised for school buildings.
That framing is contested. Logan Verhoeven, director of the Comité des élèves francophones (CEF), rejected the suggestion of political instrumentalisation. “There isn’t someone behind these mobilisations… it’s time to stop talking about manipulation and listen to what students have to say,” he told RTBF. RTBF’s own analysis described the movement as spontaneous and decentralised, launched and shared by students on social media without any party or union claiming its origin.
The French Dimension
Across the border, the scale is far greater. According to RT en français, France recorded 984 arrests and 65 police and gendarme injuries on Monday alone, bringing the total since 28 September to more than 6,000 arrests and 715 injured officers, per the Interior Ministry. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez defended police interventions, saying that “the proportionality of a police action is judged not on the basis of its consequences, but on the context.”
The human cost has been severe. A 15-year-old student in Lens lost his hand after picking up a police grenade, an incident that prompted Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the French Greens, to demand that the government “understand that, or resign.” Ten investigations have been opened by the IGPN, France’s internal police oversight body, and 215 students have been injured since the protests began. A national “Grande manifestation jeune” was called for Tuesday, with a march in Paris expected to draw 20,000 to 40,000 people.
French authorities have reportedly linked the movement to the radical-left party La France insoumise (LFI), which denies orchestrating it. The protests come roughly seven months before French presidential elections, giving the events a charged political edge.
What’s Next
In Belgium, the immediate question is whether the Liège movement holds beyond Tuesday. School directors had been due to meet the city’s mayor to review security, with remote teaching or suspended classes floated if guarantees were insufficient. The FWB ministry has planned talks with unions and school-organising federations around 13 October.
The 13-year-old’s case signals a broader shift: prosecutors on both sides of the border are now pursuing online incitement, not only on-the-ground offenders, a development with significant implications given that minors make up the overwhelming majority of those arrested. Whether the movement fades, as French reporting suggests it may by the All Saints’ holidays on 17 October, or whether frustration over crowded classes and shrinking budgets sustains it, may depend less on policing than on whether students believe anyone is listening.