Paris school students protest against police violence after Green activist's death

School students in Paris promised to continue protests on Friday over the death of a young environmental activist during a protest against the construction of a dam this month. Police cleared a protest camp in the Normandy city of Rouen early on Friday morning.

A protest in Marseille just after Rémi Fraisse was killed Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier

About 1,000 schools students demonstrated in Paris on Thursday and activists picketed 28 high schools in protest at the death of Rémi Fraisse - a 21-year-old botanist killed by a police teargas grenade at a protest near the south-western town of Sivens.

Organised by a far-left school students’ group, the Mouvement Inter-Luttes Indépendant, which was founded last year and is critical of established schools unions, the Paris protest called for an end to “police brutality” and for the resignation of Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

After Thusday’s rally organisers called for new demonstrations on Friday.

Police in Rouen swooped on a protest camp set up by anarchists and ecology activists on Tuesday in protest at Fraisse’s death at 4.30am on Friday, clearing the area with no resistance.

Officials in the Brittany city of Rennes have banned a demonstration against "state violence" due to be held on Saturday.

French President François Hollande was to meet leaders of France Nature Environnement (FNE), of which Fraisse was a member, on Friday, although the group had asked for the interview before he was killed.

While evoking the Sivens dam, they will raise “questions of democracy and the need to work differently”, FNE member Denez l’Hostis said.

During a televised interview on Thursday evening Hollande promised two inquiries into Fraisse’s death – the first into the grenades “which have been used for 50 years and have never killed anyone before”, the second to “establish what happened” on the night Fraisse was killed during clashes between police and protesters.