Protests swept across France, following the death of teenager Nael m (17 years old) shot by a French policeman at a traffic light last Tuesday in the suburb of Nanterre, buildings and vehicles were set on fire and shops were looted in the unrest that spread throughout the country, which included cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille in addition to Paris.

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Edited by| Hugh Gey

 

Europe  section -  CJ journalist

 

Paris – July,1,2023

 

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The French Interior Ministry announced that 1,311 people were arrested on Friday night Saturday across the country as riots continued for the fourth night in a row

The ministry explained that this number is much higher than the previous night's arrests, which involved 875 people.

The funeral of the 17-year-old man who was shot dead by a French policeman will be held on Saturday.

France deployed 45 thousand policemen and some vehicles on the streets on Saturday after French cities were hit by riots for the fourth night in a row .

The violence, during which some buildings and cars were set on fire, as well as some shops were looted, put President Emmanuel Macron in the biggest crisis during his presidency since the yellow vest protests that broke out in 2018.

His death, caught on camera, rekindled long-standing complaints from low-income, mixed-race and urban communities that the police practice violence and racism.

Earlier on Saturday, French interior minister Gerald darmanan announced that 270 people had been arrested on Friday night, bringing the total number to more than 1,100 since the unrest began.

The arrests on Friday night included 80 people in the southern city of Marseille, the second largest in France.

Photos on social media showed an explosion shaking the Old Port area of Marseille. City authorities said they were investigating the cause but did not believe there were any injuries or loss of life.

Marseille mayor Benoit Bayan called on the national government to send additional troops immediately. He said in a tweet late on Friday that "scenes of looting and violence are unacceptable".

Darmanan asked the local authorities to stop the movement of all buses and trams from nine o'clock on Friday evening (19:00 GMT) across the country, and later said that 45 thousand police forces had been deployed, five thousand more than on Thursday.

The interior minister sent a message to firefighters and police officers in which he said that "the coming hours will be decisive and I know that I can count on your hard efforts," in an attempt to put an end to the unrest.

Asked on TF1's prime-time news programme on Friday evening whether the government could declare a state of emergency, dharmanan said: "Quite simply, we are not ruling out any hypothesis and we will see after tonight what the president of the Republic will choose.

In Paris, police cleared the famous Place de la Concorde in the center of the capital Paris from protesters on Friday night after an unplanned demonstration began there.

The players of the French national football team issued a statement calling for calm. "The violence must stop to make room for mourning, dialogue and reconstruction," they said in a statement posted on the Instagram account of the national team star Kylian Mbappe.

The authorities canceled some events, including two concerts at the Stade de France on the outskirts of the capital. Tour de France organizers say they are ready to deal with any situation when the riders enter the country on Monday after the start of the race in the Spanish city of Bilbao.

Macron left an EU summit in Brussels early so that he could attend the second emergency Government Meeting in two days.

Macron asked social media platforms to remove the "most sensitive" riot footage from their pages and inform the authorities of the identity of users who incite violence.

Dharmanan met with representatives of the companies" meta"," Twitter"," Snapchat"and"TikTok". The company "Snapchat" said that it does not tolerate content that incites violence at all.

Mohamed Jacoby, a friend of the victim's family who has watched Nael grow up since he was a child, said the anger was fuelled by a sense of injustice in the slums after police forces used violence against ethnic minorities, many of whom hail from former French colonies.

"We are tired, we are French too. We are against violence, we are not scum". Macron denies the existence of systematic racism within the law enforcement agencies.

Some tourists were worried, while others expressed support for the demonstrators.

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Office stressed the importance of peaceful gatherings. He called on the French authorities to ensure that the use of force by the police is in accordance with the principles of non-discrimination.

"This is an opportunity for the country to seriously address the deep problems of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement,"said bureau spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani.

The policeman, who the prosecution said admitted to firing a fatal shot at the underage teenager, has been the subject of an official investigation for premeditated murder and is now in pre-trial detention.

His lawyer Laurent Franck Lennard told the BFM TV channel that his client aimed at the driver's leg, but hit something when the car started, which made him shoot at the young man's chest. "Certainly (the policeman) did not want to kill the driver,"he said.

 

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