Two cases of extreme violence when they were leaving school, of brutal beatings that left a 15-year-old student dead and a 14-year-old girl seriously injured, have shocked France. President Emmanuel Macron, who yesterday visited an educational center in Paris, said that “the school must remain a sanctuary” and promised stronger measures to prevent such behaviors and punish them more severely.
The fatal attack, in which the victim was a boy identified as Shamseddine, took place on Thursday at a secondary school in Viry-Châtillon, in the Essone department, about 25 kilometers south of Paris. The teenager was attacked in the middle of the street, near the school, by three masked youths. Yesterday, the police arrested five suspects aged between 15 and 20. Nothing is known about the motive, whether it was revenge for personal reasons or between rival gangs, although witnesses who spoke to the media described Shamseddine as a seemingly calm and untroubled boy.
In the case of the 14-year-old girl, Samara, attacked in Montpellier, more is known about the possible reasons for the beating. According to the mother, another student, a strict Muslim, had been harassing her for some time with the reproach of acting like a “whore”, because she dressed European and put on make-up. It is not clear if this was the main motive or if there were other reasons such as jealousy or disputes of various nature. Apparently, some colleagues accused Samara of having filmed them with the mobile phone without their consent. Some of the alleged attackers, all minors, were arrested.
The serious incidents took place days before the two-week spring school break. France is one of the countries in the world with the most school breaks.
Macron took advantage of a visit to a Parisian school to reflect on the increasingly frequent episodes of “uninhibited violence” among young people, at increasingly precocious ages. Without referring directly to the latest dramas, the head of state said that very often “problems start in families”, with a special incidence on single parents, who are usually more vulnerable. As a basis for his argument, he cited the sociological studies carried out after the serious riots at the beginning of last summer due to the death of a teenager at a traffic control in Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris.
Macron insisted that the solution cannot lie only in the school system but also in the responsibility of families, and that potentially dangerous situations must be detected in time. The president announced severe punitive measures, which may include sending the most violent teenagers to closed boarding schools.
France suffers from a serious cultural problem of frequent exacerbation of violence, as evidenced by periodic riots that cause vast urban destruction. French society tolerates and considers normal levels of violence that would be unacceptable in other countries: for example, the ritualistic and random burning of hundreds of vehicles every July 14, a national holiday, and New Year’s Eve.
