Just one year before the 2024 Paris Olympics, the French volcano has erupted again. The resentment accumulated by the youth of immigrant descent and the anger unleashed by the death of the 17-year-old Nahel at a traffic stop, led to an outbreak of violence the likes of which had not been seen since the height of the yellow vests.
After a nightmare night, between Wednesday and Thursday, with widespread riots, the Ministry of the Interior announced the deployment of 40,000 police and gendarmes throughout France, including 5,000 in Paris. “The State will be firm in its response” declared Minister Gérald Darmanin.
Instead of calming down the situation, the incidents worsened and spread throughout France, not just on the outskirts of Paris. Yesterday violent clashes were recorded on the sidelines of the demonstration in Nanterre in rejection of the death of Nahel, of which there is a video that has exacerbated anger. Official sources indicate that there have been a total of 421 arrests and that there are more than 150 injured agents.
There have been looting in various cities, also in central Paris. A Nike store in the Les Halles area and another Zara store on Rivoli street have been victims. In Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris, 12 buses were set on fire. Elite police units have been unable to control the situation, which has deteriorated across the country.
The strong stench of burning plastic formed a cloud, at dawn, in the satellite neighborhoods of the French capital and other cities. Numerous towns were affected by the indiscriminate action of gangs of arsonists who set fire to vehicles and garbage containers. The incidents reached the suburbs of other cities such as Toulouse, Lille, Nice, Saint-Étienne, Lyon, Dijon or Clermont-Ferrand.
In addition to vehicles, individuals and the police, a court, police stations, city halls, schools, supermarkets, urban buses and a tram were attacked. There were also acts of looting against shops. There was even an attempted assault on the Fresnes prison, in the Val-de-Marne, to free detainees.
The young protagonists of all these events used, as usual, high-powered fireworks to confront the police and set fires. In Villerbaune, on the outskirts of Lyon, an apartment building that had caught fire had to be evacuated. Several neighbors had to be treated for poisoning.
Darmanin had announced the preventive deployment of 2,000 police officers, but that number was clearly insufficient to deal with such widespread protests. Hence, yesterday decided a drastic increase in troops.
Macron convened at the Elysée, at 8 in the morning, an inter-ministerial cell to study the situation. The heads of the Interior, Justice and Ecological Transition participated, as well as the police prefect of the capital. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne canceled a planned trip to the Vendée region due to “the tensions of recent days.” The other members of the Cabinet will avoid non-essential travel.
The government spokesman, Olivier Véran, regretted that “symbols of the Republic” such as city halls and schools have been attacked, which will prevent citizens from carrying out planned administrative procedures and children from going to class. He spoke of “organized” vandalism. Alluding to the death of Nahel, Véran argued that “it is not the Republic that is in custody, it is a man (the agent involved) who must be tried if he has made a mistake.”
The young Nahel died of a shot to the chest when he was driving a rented yellow Mercedes, with a Polish license plate, and tried to escape at a checkpoint. Yesterday the prosecutor of the Republic of Nanterre, Pascal Prache, gave more details. The policeman who fired the shot went to court and was later formally incriminated and sent to pretrial detention, as requested by the prosecution, considering that he could have committed “voluntary homicide” by exceeding the alleged self-defense put forward.
Prache reported that the agents on a motorcycle chased the vehicle, in which two other occupants were traveling in addition to the victim, for a time through the streets of Nanterre. The driver did not respect a first control and later started the car when they stopped him again. Nahel had a record for a similar case. No weapons or drugs were found in the vehicle.
The Nanterre drama has reopened the controversy over the effects of a law, approved in 2017, which allows the police to fire at a vehicle that does not respect a checkpoint, whenever the lives of the officers or other people are in danger. The problem is that threat perception is subjective and abuses have occurred.
The government’s fear is that a wave of lasting violence will unleash, a revolt in the banlieues (suburbs) like the one that took place in 2005, when the conservative Jacques Chirac was president, with Nicolas Sarkozy as interior minister. This time of year, with heat and light until very late, is conducive to street protests in already conflictive areas such as the cités, the neighborhoods of humble people and immigrant origin, of blocks of flats, badly hit by drug trafficking. and Islamic extremism.
Political power must maintain a delicate balance between firmness in defense of order and sensitivity to the indignation of sectors of the population very hurt by what happened in Nanterre, since they see it as another example of a pattern of police conduct.
The president of Los Republicanos (LR, traditional right), Éric Ciotti, requested that a state of emergency be declared in all the areas affected by the riots to restore order. “Armed gangs have tried to kill policemen, have attacked houses and have tried to free prisoners in Fresnes,” Ciotti was shocked. It is intolerable”. “I strongly condemn these acts,” added the conservative leader. The Republic cannot back down.”
The city of Clamart, in the southwest of Paris, where an entire tram burned down, declared a curfew between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., in force from yesterday until Monday, July 3, to avoid as much as possible new destruction.
