Global Courant
Despite a massive police effort and 1,311 arrests, riots raged in cities across France on the fourth night, burning cars and buildings and looting shops, as family and friends prepared Saturday to bury the 17-year-old whose murder the police caused the unrest.
France’s Interior Ministry announced the new number of arrests across the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a hitherto failed attempt to quell the violence.
Despite a call to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street battles raged between young protesters and police. About 2,500 fires were set and shops looted, according to authorities.
The funeral ceremony for the teenager, identified only as Nahel, who was killed by police in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday, began Saturday. Family and friends view the open casket before it is taken to a mosque for a ceremony and later buried in a city cemetery.
A French national police officer secures the entrance to a building as he stands next to the name ‘Nahel’ spray-painted on a pillar during protests in Nantes, western France on Friday. (Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP/Getty Images)
As the number of arrests continued to rise, the government suggested that the violence had started to decrease thanks to tighter security measures. Yet the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far afield, in the French overseas territories, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
The French national football team – including international star Kylian Mbappé, an idol for many young people in the deprived areas where the anger is rooted – called for an end to the violence.
“Many of us come from working-class neighborhoods; we too share this sense of pain and sorrow” over the murder of 17-year-old Nahel, the players said in a statement. “Violence doesn’t solve anything. There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself.”
They said it is time for “mourning, dialogue and reconstruction”.
Long simmering tension
The fatal shooting of Nahel, whose last name has not been made public, sparked long-simmering tensions between police and youth in housing projects struggling with poverty, unemployment and racial discrimination. The ensuing riots are the worst France has seen in years and put new pressure on President Emmanuel Macron, who called on parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for fueling violence.
Anger erupted in the Paris suburb after his death there on Tuesday and quickly spread across the country.
A photo taken on Saturday shows the damage caused by rioting at the entrance to a car park in the Aubiers district of Bordeaux in southwest France. (Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty Images)
Firefighters in Nanterre extinguished fires started early Saturday by protesters who left scorched remains of cars across the streets. In the neighboring suburb of Colombes, protesters overturned rubbish bins and used them as makeshift barricades.
Looters broke into a gun shop in the evening and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said. Officers in Marseille arrested nearly 90 people as groups of protesters set fire to cars and smashed shop windows to remove the contents.
Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of about 30 arrests were for theft, police said. Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorized protest drew more than 1,000 people earlier Friday night.
The interior ministry said there were more than 2,500 fires across France during the night. The night before, 917 people were arrested across the country, 500 buildings attacked, 2,000 vehicles set on fire and dozens of shops looted.
Hundreds of police officers, firefighters injured
While overnight arrests were the highest to date, there were fewer fires, cars burnt out and police stations attacked across France than the previous night, according to the interior ministry. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin claimed the violence was “much less intense”.
Hundreds of police officers and firefighters were injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities have not released any injury figures for protesters.
A pedestrian uses her phone to snap a picture of a vandalized truck in northern Marseille, southern France, on Saturday following France’s fourth consecutive night of rioting over the murder of a teenager by police. (Clement Mahoudeau/AFP/Getty Images)
Nanterre mayor Patrick Jarry said France must “press for change” in deprived areas.
Despite repeated calls from the government for calm and stricter police action, there was also brutal daylight violence on Friday. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas and the windows of a fast-food restaurant were smashed in a shopping center near Paris, where officers deterred people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.
In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron waited to declare a state of emergency, an option used in similar circumstances in 2005.
No night buses, trams
Darmanin on Friday ordered a nationwide overnight closure of all public buses and streetcars, which have been targeted by rioters. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls for violence.
“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities provided information to the platforms in the hope of cooperating to identify people inciting violence.
“We will pursue any person who uses these social networks to commit acts of violence,” he said.
A man and a woman cover their noses against tear gas during a protest in Montpellier, southern France, on Friday. (Sylvain Thomas/AFP/Getty Images)
Macron, too, has targeted social media platforms that have spread dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings set on fire. He cited Snapchat and TikTok, saying they were used to organize unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities will host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the Summer Olympics. The organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the Olympics continue.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel received a preliminary charge of voluntary manslaughter. Preliminary indictments mean that investigating judges have strong suspicions of wrongdoing, but need to investigate more before taking a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon was not legally justified.
13 shootings at traffic checkpoints
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry with the officer, but not with the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking child, he wanted to kill himself,” she said.
“A police officer cannot take his gun and shoot our children, take our children’s lives,” she said. The family has roots in Algeria.
French anti-riot police officers watch a burning truck in Nantes, western France, early Saturday. (Sebastien Salom-Gomis /AFP via Getty Images)
Race was a taboo subject for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of color blind universalism. In the aftermath of Nahel’s murder, French anti-racism activists renewed their complaints about the police’s actions.
Thirteen people who violated traffic controls were shot dead by French police last year. This year, three more people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have sparked demands for greater accountability in France, which has also seen racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
This week’s protests mirrored the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police at a power station in Clichy-sous -Bois.
