Unrest: As France burns, thousands of rioters arrested after clash with police
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Despite the government’s stern warning that a national emergency could be clamped across France if the riots did not end immediately, rioting and arson raged in different cities for a fourth night on Friday, with cars and buildings set ablaze and stores looted, as the next of kin prepared on Saturday to bury the 17-year-old Algerian origin youth whose killing by police on Tuesday unleashed the unrest.
Thousands of rioters had so far been arrested across France as the communal-racial fire threatened to spread to neighboring Belgium as well, the media reported.
France’s beautiful cities looked like burnt shells as damages remained widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
The national soccer team of Europe’s largest nation, including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted, pleaded for an end to the violence.
“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel,” the players said in a statement. Violence resolves nothing. There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself, they added.
It’s time for mourning, dialogue, and reconstruction instead.
The fatal shooting of Nahel, whose last name has not been made public, stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects who struggle with poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination. The subsequent rioting is the worst France has seen in years and puts new pressure on President Emmanuel Macron, who appealed to parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for fueling violence.
On Friday, looters broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said, as it arrested nearly 90 people as groups of protesters lit cars on fire and broke store windows to take what was inside.
Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, where 30 arrests made were for theft. Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorized protest drew more than 1,000 people on Friday evening.
The Interior Ministry said 994 arrests were made during the night, with more than 2,500 fires. The night before, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings were targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores were ransacked.
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, but authorities have not released injury tallies for protesters.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence, too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.
In the face of the escalating crisis that thousands of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, President Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.
Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with 45,000 police deployed overnight. Some were called back from vacation. All public buses, trains, and trams as also malls, restaurants, etc. were shut down.
President Macron zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched. Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organize unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the Summer Olympic Games. Organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the Olympics continue.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide wherein investigating magistrates, strongly suspecting wrongdoing, would need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., said she was angry at the officer but not at the police in general. He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life, she said.
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. In the wake of Nahel’s killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.
Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
This week’s protests echoed the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traor and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
