The revolt in France is not extinguished. The fourth consecutive night of unrest, between Friday and Saturday, was especially fierce in Marseille, the second most populous city in the country and the most violent, where there is already an endemic context of organized crime and constant revenge between gangs of traffickers very teens. According to a police union leader, an “apocalyptic” situation was experienced in the capital of Provence, out of control, with a multitude of looting of shops and fires of vehicles and street furniture.
“The chaos”, headlined the main Marseille newspaper, La Provence. The newspaper recalled that those who thought that Marseille could remain a little apart from the unrest in the rest of France were wrong because the local drug lords, very powerful for decades, are not interested in the disorder or the presence mass of police in the streets because it hinders his lucrative business. The sociologist Michel Wievorka, interviewed by the rotative, gave his own explanation: “You can be a trafficker one day and socially engaged the next. It is not incompatible. When there is such an accumulation of anger, it is not certain that the drug trade prevents young people from acting violently.
The balance of the new day of rage unleashed by the death of a teenager in Nanterre, last Tuesday, by a police shot, was 1,311 people arrested, many of them minors, and 79 policemen injured, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.
The gravity of the crisis is of such magnitude that President Emmanuel Macron was forced to postpone a state trip to Germany planned for the next three days.
Despite the deployment of 45,000 police, including elite units and heavy armored vehicles such as tankettes, the insurgency continued. Paris and its metropolitan area – less than in previous days -, Lyon, Lens, Metz, Strasbourg, Mülhausen and other cities were affected. Marseilles, which had been relatively calm for the first three nights, turned into a veritable inferno. The looting was intense, right in the center, including the most emblematic avenue, La Canebière. Groups of young people raided all kinds of shops and numerous tobacconists. Individuals were even seen, thanks to a video circulating on social media, firing Kalashnikov rifles. This indicates that members of organized crime may have infiltrated the riots. Armories were raided in Marseille and Nîmes. In Vaulx-en-Velin, seven policemen were injured by shotgun pellets.
It happens that Macron had just spent three days in Marseille, his favorite city, to oversee his ambitious plan to rehabilitate schools, housing and other infrastructure. The city is a frequent protagonist in the chronicles of events due to revenge – 23 deaths so far this year – between the drug clans.
The French president, one of the democratic heads of state with the most constitutional powers, is not free to comply with his agenda. In a statement from the Elysee, it was announced that the decision to postpone the three-day trip to the Federal Republic of Germany was taken after Macron held a conversation with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “Taking into account the internal situation, the President of the Republic (Macron) has indicated that he wished to be able to stay in France these next few days – said the published text-. The two presidents have therefore agreed to postpone the visit to Germany to a later date”.
Macron had to travel to Ludwigsburg, where the Franco-German Institute is based, to Berlin and Dresden. In this last Saxon city, ravaged by Allied bombing during World War II, he had to give an important speech in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. The visit was going to take place at a delicate moment of friction between Paris and Berlin over several issues, including the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO.
It is the second time in a few months that public disorder has forced Macron to postpone an important diplomatic appointment. In March, the first visit of the new king of England, Charles III, had to be suspended due to the demonstrations against the pension reform. The British monarch had chosen France for his first official trip abroad since his mother, Elizabeth II, succeeded him. It was an uncomfortable situation for Paris, if unavoidable. Charles III did visit Germany. The King of England could finally make the trip to France in September.
The drastic decision to change the agenda, no less than with France’s main partner in the European Union, shows the anxiety with which the Elysee is experiencing the current crisis. Macron’s stay in Paris is an indication that more quiet measures could be taken to stop the revolt. Although the Government is reluctant to declare a state of emergency, the circumstances could force a review of this position.
These days, Macron’s speeches on immigration ghettos in France and the danger engendered by “the concentration of educational and economic difficulties in some neighborhoods of the Republic” are remembered. It is a problem that has been dragging on for decades but which, despite the State’s investments, has not been overcome. Le Monde talks about an “explosive generation” of young people under the age of 18 who act with great coordination and excitement thanks to social networks.
Sometimes the term “lost territories of the Republic” has been used. The Prime Minister of the Interior of the Macron era, Gérard Collomb, invented the category of “neighbourhoods of republican reconquest”. But when he left office, in October 2018, he issued a stern warning that the serious problems persisted and posed a serious medium-term threat to the stability of the State.
In Nanterre, the funerals of Nahel, the 17-year-old who died on Tuesday after being shot by a policeman during a checkpoint, took place. Hundreds of people gathered at the funeral home, where access to the press was strictly prohibited. Later there was a funeral prayer in the Ibn Badis mosque and later the burial of the corpse in the cemetery of Mont Valérien, at the foot of the hill of the same name, a scene loaded with tragic history. Its fortress served as a prison and place of execution for members of the resistance captured by the German occupiers during World War II.
