Riots across France appeared less intense on Saturday as thousands of police were deployed in cities across the country after the funeral of a North African teenager whose police shooting sparked nationwide unrest . President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany set to begin on Sunday to deal with the worst crisis for his leadership since “yellow vest” protests paralyzed much of France in late 2018.
About 45,000 police were on the streets, with specialized units, armored vehicles and helicopters to reinforce its three biggest cities, Paris, Lyon and Marseille. On Sunday morning, the situation was calmer than the previous four nights, although there was some tension in central Paris and sporadic clashes in the Mediterranean cities of Marseille, Nice and the eastern city of Strasbourg.
The biggest confrontation was in Marseille where police fired tear gas and fought street battles with youths around the city center until late into the night. In Paris, police increased security on the city’s historic Champs Elysees avenue after calls on social media to gather there. Security forces were deployed on the road which is usually packed with tourists and were conducting spot checks. The shop front was boarded up to prevent possible damage and looting.
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The interior ministry said 1,311 people were arrested on Friday night, compared with 875 the previous night, although it described the violence as “low intensity”. Police said about 200 people were arrested across the country on Saturday.
Local authorities across the country announced a ban on demonstrations, ordered public transport to be closed in the evening, and some imposed overnight curfews. The unrest, a blow to France’s global image just a year before the Olympic Games are to be held, will increase political pressure on Macron. He had already faced months of angry and sometimes violent protests across the country after the pension changes.
The postponement of a state visit to Germany is the second time this year that he has had to cancel a high-level event because of the domestic situation in France. In March, he canceled a planned state visit by King Charles.
teenager’s funeral
Nahel, 17, of Algerian and Moroccan parents, was shot on Tuesday by a police officer during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. For the funeral, several hundred people lined up to enter Nanterre’s Grand Mosque. Volunteers wearing yellow vests stood guard, while a few dozen onlookers watched from across the street.
Some of the mourners, with their arms outstretched, said in Arabic, “God is greatest”, as they walked along the street praying. Marie, 60, said she has lived in Nanterre for 50 years and has always had problems with the police. “This absolutely needs to stop. The government is completely disconnected from our reality,” he said.
The shooting death of a teenager caught on video has rekindled long-standing complaints of police violence and racism by poor and racially mixed urban communities. The Nanterre prosecutor said Thursday that Nahel was previously known to police for failing to obey traffic stop orders and illegally driving a rental car.
Macron has denied systemic racism in French law enforcement agencies. There is also widespread anger in the country’s poorest suburbs, where inequalities and crime are rife and French leaders have failed for decades to tackle what some politicians call “geographic, social and ethnic apartheid”.
shops ransacked
Rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the unrest began. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Saturday that more than 200 police officers had been injured, with the average age of those arrested being 17.
Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti said that 30% of the detainees were under the age of 18. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said more than 700 shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches had been “ransacked, looted and sometimes even burnt” since Tuesday.
In Marseille, where 80 people were arrested on Friday, police said they had detained 60. Tatiana, a 79-year-old pensioner who lives in the city centre, said: “It is very scary. We can hear the helicopters and we are not going out because it is very worrying.” In Lyon, France’s third largest city, police deployed armored personnel carriers and a helicopter.
The unrest evokes memories of nationwide riots in 2005 that lasted three weeks and forced then-President Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency after two people electrocuted an electricity substation while hiding from the police. The youth had died.
Players of the national football team issued a rare statement calling for peace. “The violence must stop to leave room for mourning, dialogue and rebuilding,” he said on star Kylian Mbappé’s Instagram account.
The South Winners supporters group, an influential fan group of Olympique de Marseille, called on the city’s youth to “be wise and show restraint”. “By behaving like this you are tarnishing Nahel’s memory and dividing our city as well.”
Events including two concerts at the Stade de France on the outskirts of Paris were cancelled, creative director Hedi Slimane said on Instagram, while LVMH-owned (LVMH.PA) fashion house Celine canceled its 2024 menswear show on Sunday. Gave.
With the government urging social media companies to remove inflammatory content, Darminin met with executives from Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. Snapchat said it has zero tolerance for content that promotes violence.
Prosecutors say the policeman who admitted to firing the fatal shot at Nahel is in preventive custody under formal investigation for voluntary manslaughter, which is the equivalent of being charged under Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions.
His lawyer, Laurent-Franc Liénard, said his client aimed at the driver’s leg, but was hit when the car moved forward, shooting him in the side of his chest. “Obviously (the officer) didn’t want to kill the driver,” Lenard said on BFM TV.