Global Courant
During a march for the French teenager killed by police during a traffic stop earlier this week, protesters described the simmering anger in the community over security forces widely seen as aggressive and racist.
An estimated 6,200 people marched through the streets of Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris, where 17-year-old Nahel was shot dead by police behind the wheel of a yellow Mercedes he was illegally driving.
Led by his mother Mounia, who drove a flatbed truck while waving to the crowd, the protest meandered from the family’s residential area to the local police station where clashes occurred.
Riot police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, while groups of youths, some in balaclavas, threw stones and other projectiles.
“It’s the last straw. We can’t stand it anymore,” said 45-year-old Corinne, a black local who has lived in the area for 14 years. “It’s always the same people who get killed.”
“Personally, I’m afraid of the police,” the financial services company added, asking not to give her last name. “The way they talk to you is rude. And you always know that things can quickly get out of hand.”
Campaigners have long complained about heavy-handed policing in France’s multi-ethnic suburbs, with a series of incidents involving black or Arab citizens over the past two decades sparking riots.
Police unions respond that their officers face an impossible task serving communities that suffer from high levels of delinquency and drug-related crime, but where they are often treated as an unwanted presence.
“Everyone hates the police!” was a popular chorus at the rally on Thursday, along with “Justice for Nahel!”.
Graffiti reading “The police kill” or “Death to the pigs” is scrawled on walls and bus stops all over the area.
– ‘It has to stop’ –
“They’re here to help us, not kill us!” said outraged mother-of-four Fanta Traore, a school worker, as she watched police fire tear gas at the end of the march. “I don’t trust them at all.”
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The 36-year-old said her and her husband’s cars were set on fire on Wednesday night and explosions held her up until 4:30 a.m., but she understood the anger.
‘He was just a child. We knew him a little bit. Everyone knows each other here,” she said. ‘It has to stop. How can you kill someone like that? For nothing.’
The police officer involved in the shooting initially claimed he opened fire after Nahel drove towards him, but video of the incident shows him standing to the side of the vehicle firing his weapon at close range.
He was charged with voluntary manslaughter on Thursday.
A record 13 people were killed by police during traffic checks last year, with many of the victims being black or of Arab descent.
Another police officer was charged with voluntary manslaughter in the southwestern city of Angouleme on Wednesday after shooting and killing a black 19-year-old supermarket worker as he drove to work in the early hours of the morning earlier this month.
“The whole world needs to see that when we march to Nahel, we are marching for all those who are not filmed,” Assa Traore, a well-known anti-police brutality activist whose brother died after his 2016 arrest, told the rally.
Compared to the notoriously deprived suburbs of northeastern Paris, Nanterre is relatively affluent and lies in the shadow of the city’s financial district, whose skyscrapers are visible from the residential areas that constitute poverty areas.
Gangs of youths fired fireworks at security forces on Wednesday night, setting fires across the area in a second night of violence, with clashes also reported in other parts of Paris and smaller towns across the country.
“Burning things is not the solution,” Corinne said. “They’re destroying other people’s property in our community. But maybe it’s the only way to be heard, and it seems to be having an effect.”
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