This amateur video shows gendarmes beating a young protester in the courtyard of Said Mohamed Cheick High School on Monday, February 20, 2017.

The gendarmes beat the student in the back of a pick-up belonging to the PIGN [Editor’s note: the intervention squad of the national military police, or, in French, the peloton d’intervention de la gendarmerie nationale], which they had parked in the compound of Said Mohamed Cheick High School. In front of dozens of witnesses, six gendarmes climbed into the back and started being the student, who is wearing a white T-shirt. The student is eventually pushed to the ground. When the footage ends, he is still being beaten.Several gendarmes patrol around the vehicle, guns in hand. Assad Ibrahim, a 21-year-old student, was hit with a bullet, even though he had not been demonstrating in the street but had stayed inside the classroom with some classmates."I was inside a classroom with some classmates when the gendarmes stormed the school. We hid in a small side room, but one of the gendarmes entered and started hitting one of the students. I went back into the classroom but the same gendarme followed me and shot at me," Ibrahim said in an interview with local press from his hospital bed.Authorities quickly responded to the incident and suspended the gendarmes accused of carrying out the violence. They are currently in prison, awaiting trial.Mohamed Yahya, a senior member of the gendarmerie, said that the police had fired only rubber bullets, during an interview with a local newspaper, La Gazette des Comores , published on February 23, 2017.