Global Courant
Riots have gripped the outskirts of Paris and quickly spread to other towns and cities across France after the death of a 17-year-old during a traffic stop, but how could the situation get so out of hand?
“What’s happening there is the result of a failure to integrate the country’s Muslim immigrant population,” Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital.
“The France of legend is a far cry from the day-to-day reality of living in a ghetto community that does not have the same opportunities to progress and succeed as the native population,” he said. “The forgotten communities in France show that they will no longer be forgotten.”
“The latent anger felt in the banlieues needed only a spark to explode and is now being exploited by an anarchist strain of French society that has always welcomed disorder in the form of rioting and looting.”
MORE THAN 1,300 ARRESTS ACROSS FRANCE DURING FOURTH NIGHT OF POLICE RETURNS THAT KILLED TEENAGER
In all, more than 2,000 arrests have been made during a five-day period of unrest across the country. French President Emmanuel Macron also postponed his planned visit to Germany due to the unrest. France’s interior minister said on Saturday that the average age of those arrested was 17.
Secretary General of Unite SGP Police FO union Gregory Joron said police “have not seen such urban violence in 18 years in so many cities in France”.
Firefighters extinguish burning vehicles during clashes between protesters and police after the death of Nahel M. in the Paris suburb of Nanterre in France on June 28, 2023. (Reuters/Stephanie Lecocq)
Police arrested the teenager, identified only as Nahel M., in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday morning. Nahel was working as a delivery boy, but he stopped to talk to two police officers, who approached his vehicle to explain that he had broken the traffic rules, a prosecutor said.
The exact spark for the incident remains unclear, in part due to the contradiction of police reports and video circulating on social media. Police said Nahel drove his car to one of the officers, while the video shows one of the officers pointing a gun at him and saying, “You’ll get a bullet in the head,” according to France24.
Nahel drove a yellow Mercedes. Had two passengers in the car at the time and no driver’s license with him. He was reportedly taken into custody for refusing to comply with an earlier traffic check and is due to appear in juvenile court in September.
Firefighters use a water hose on a burnt-out bus in Nanterre, outside Paris, on July 1, 2023. (AP)
The officer then appears to shoot Nahel as the car suddenly drives off, traveling only a short distance before crashing, with Nahel dying on the spot. Police took the offending officer into custody and opened an investigation into voluntary manslaughter charges, with charges against him set for Friday.
Reuters reported that in an interview with French television, the police officer’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, said his client aimed at the driver’s leg but was bumped as the car took off, causing him to shoot to his chest. “Clearly (the officer) did not want to kill the driver,” he said, according to the report.
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Nahel, who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent, had no criminal record, according to a lawyer for his family. He played for a local rugby club and was part of a program to help people from disadvantaged areas find work placements. Nahel planned to become an electrician.
Protesters march at a rally in Paris on Thursday night. (AP/Aurelien Morissard)
Macron has given a mixed response to the crisis, initially describing the shooting as “inexplicable” and “inexcusable”, but then decrying the protests and blaming everything from social media to video games for the rising violence .
Macron argued that social media platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and others, have fueled the riots, especially after the personal information of the officer who shot Nahel ended up on the platforms. He said his government would work with social media sites to remove “the most sensitive content” and identify users who are “calling for disorder or aggravating the violence”. Macron also denied that there was systemic racism within the country’s law enforcement services.
Police clear a street on the third night of protests sparked by the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old driver in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, France, on June 30, 2023. The shooting of the teenager on June 27 led to violence in the city and led to tensions between the police and young people in housing projects. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Nahel’s mother accused police of reacting violently to “an Arab face,” drawing attention to the underlying tension between what some observers believe is a massive and underserved North African, mostly Muslim immigrant population, and the police.
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Although he had no criminal record, Nahel had been subject to five police checks since 2021 and had refused to comply with an order to stop. Most of the arrests involved driving without a driver’s license or insurance and using false license plates.
Cars burn after a march for Nahel on June 29, 2023 in Nanterre, outside Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
The video and the contradictory police testimony that gave the impression of a cover-up sparked anger among some French citizens and led to the first protesters. Protesters say Nahel’s death is a symptom of underlying racism in France’s law enforcement agencies, the New York Times reported.
Protesters have clashed violently with police since the incident, with an increasing number of arrests as protesters have thrown stones and fireworks at police officers, set fire to vehicles and rubbish and damaged buildings.
Police forces clash with youths in Nanterre, outside Paris, on June 29, 2023. The June 27 shooting of teenager Nahel M. sparked violence in the city and sparked tensions between police and youths in housing projects. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
The first protests took place in Nanterre, but by the third day they had spread to other towns and cities, including Paris itself, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille.
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Rioters in Marseille robbed a gun shop, took shotguns but no ammunition.
Burnt-out buses are displayed in Aubervilliers, France, after a night of clashes between protesters and police. The protests arose after the death of Nahel M., a 17-year-old who was killed by a French police officer during a traffic check in Nanterre, near Paris, on June 30, 2023. (Reuters/Sarah Meyssonnier)
Protesters clash with police after a march to protest the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel by a police officer in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on June 29, 2023. French authorities have charged a police officer with murder during the shooting as the country faces has with ongoing violent clashes over the murder. (Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Saturday, Macron canceled a trip to Germany to deal with the crisis at home despite controversially attending an Elton John concert as protests and violent clashes continued to grow.
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He called an emergency meeting of the National Assembly to decide how to handle the protests, eventually deciding to deploy 45,000 officers and armored vehicles to try to quell the protests. Initially, law enforcement agencies only deploy about 9,000 officers.
After Thursday’s emergency meeting, Macron called the clashes “absolutely unjustifiable”.
A protester runs away on the third night of protests sparked by the police fatal shooting of a 17-year-old driver in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, France, Friday, June 30, 2023. The shooting of the teenager on June 27, identified as Nahel, sparked urban violence and fueled tensions between police and youth in housing projects and other neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
As of Saturday night, Reuters reported that the situation had calmed down with sporadic outbreaks of violence in parts of the country, including Marseille and Nice. In Paris, the venue of next year’s Olympics, police added more officers to guard the Avenue Champs Elysees after social media reportedly called for protesters to gather there.
French police gathered in large numbers on the Champs Elysees in Paris on Saturday evening. (Reuters)
French President Emmanuel Macron has described the murder of a 17-year-old delivery boy by police at a traffic control as “inexcusable” and called for a thorough investigation. The killing has sparked widespread, violent protests. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
When asked on a TV news channel on Friday whether the government would declare a state of emergency, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said, “very simply, we are not ruling out any hypothesis, and we will see after tonight what the President of the republic chooses.”
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Fox News Digital’s Adam Sabes, Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.
Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.
