Student Protester Dies in Paris; Tension High

PARIS —  The death of a student protester after a beating by French riot police shook the government of Premier Jacques Chirac on Saturday and pushed France into a mood of anxious and bitter tension.

President Francois Mitterrand cut short his stay in London for the summit conference of the European Communities, which ended later Saturday, and flew back to France. Mitterrand, a Socialist, called Chirac, a conservative, to the presidential offices in the Elysee Palace for urgent consultations. The two leaders met for 35 minutes, but Chirac, as he left the palace, made no comment to reporters.

There was an obvious need for one or both of the leaders to take charge of the emotionally charged situation, but it was not clear what either leader could or would do.

New student demonstrations and rioting erupted in Paris on the news of the student’s death, and there seemed little hope of reconciliation soon between the students and the government.

Although the two acts were probably not related, Alain Devaquet, the 44-year-old former chemistry professor who had written the legislation that infuriated the students in the first place, resigned as minister of higher education a few hours after the death. His resignation was evidently prompted by the Chirac government’s decision to take the bill out of his hands and postpone consideration of its most controversial proposals.

Students Assail Premier

But the students, who had been chanting for Devaquet’s resignation for many days, did not seem to care about him any more. Enraged at the death, they directed their fury now at Chirac, Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua and the police.

According to several witnesses who told their story on national television, the victim, 22-year-old Malik Oussekine, a law student at the Dauphine campus of the University of Paris, was chased by three riot police, who caught up with him after dispersing a demonstration in the Latin Quarter after midnight and clubbed him with their batons.

Paul Bauzelon, a young civil servant at the Ministry of Finance, said he was returning from a movie and opening the door of his apartment building when Oussekine tried to rush into the hallway to escape the police. But the police followed him in, clubbing and kicking him and beating Bauzelon as well. Oussekine, a French citizen born in Algeria, was left unconscious.

An ambulance was called, but Oussekine died soon after reaching the hospital. The office of the French public prosecutor later issued a statement saying that Oussekine, a small, thin man, had no skull wounds and that the wounds to his face and to the rest of his body were not enough to have caused his death. The prosecutor’s office said death had come from a heart attack. But a lawyer for Oussekine’s family complained that the police had refused to allow him to participate in the preliminary investigation.

Most students showed no doubt about who they thought had killed Oussekine, and one of their demonstrations during the day ended with a violent clash with police. Student marshals tried but failed to stop some protesters from throwing paving stones at the police near a precinct headquarters. The police then charged the students, firing tear gas into the crowd.

The three policemen who, according to witnesses, beat Oussekine belonged to a group of riot police known as the Special Brigade. Wearing helmets and armed with long, thick batons, they move through Paris streets in pairs on motorcycles.

The French government created the Special Brigade after the student uprisings and clashes with police in May, 1968. The clashes with the police last week have been regarded as the most violent in France since that 1968 uprising. Yet, despite the intensity of the violence in those days and a toll of hundreds wounded, there were no deaths.

The government of Chirac had tried to appease the students a few hours before the death of Oussekine by pledging to postpone consideration of the most controversial features of its proposed university legislation. The students feared that these features would make the universities more selective and more expensive and thus endanger their chances for degrees.

In a televised address Friday night, Minister of Education Rene Monory promised to postpone consideration of these controversial proposals “for the moment” but refused to withdraw the bill as a whole.

It seemed unlikely that student leaders, who had organized a mass march of more than 200,000 protesting students through the streets of Paris on Thursday, would be content with Monory’s promises. And, if there were any small chance of acceptance, it was then wiped out by the death of Oussekine.

Instead, thousands of students spent most of the day in marches of mourning and protest throughout the Latin Quarter on the left bank of the Seine River. Alluding to their opposition to a proposal in the bill that would let universities select students through entry requirements instead of taking all students who pass their stiff high school baccalaureate examinations, one marching student carried a sign, “One dead: The selection system has started.”

Student leaders, however, were still not sure what course they should take, and they planned to meet well into the night to settle on a plan of action for the next few days.

(Early today, police charged through the Left Bank to clear the streets after three hours of rioting that left at least 20 cars afire, Reuters news agency reported. Aided by bulldozers to demolish blazing barricades, the police thrust along the main boulevards crossing the Latin Quarter and charged at the demonstrators, but refrained from using tear gas.

(As relative calm returned to the main avenues, police chased ragged bunches of youths down the narrow side streets of the Latin Quarter, traditional center of Parisian student life.)

Mitterrand, before leaving for Paris, told a news conference in London that he was returning “to follow the events and measure and reflect on what can be done.”

Chirac, who also had attended the summit conference in London, also returned before its close, but that was according to his original schedule. Chirac came back to join a huge celebration by his Rally for the Republic marking its 10th anniversary as a political party. But the celebration was dampened by the events of the day. Although delegates sat through circus acts and musical numbers, the mood was strained, and party leaders decided to cancel the ball that had been scheduled for the night.

In a brief speech to the delegates, Chirac said his government is ready and willing to have a “dialogue with the students” and that he, like everyone else, “condemned a violence that has already gotten out of hand.”

When news of the death of Oussekine reached the National Assembly, its president, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a former premier, suspended the session for several minutes of mourning, noting in sorrow that the clashes had already cost the loss of the eye of a student and the loss of the hand of another student on Thursday night.