News/Commentary

France literally on fire as seismic riots sweep multiple cities for days, and hardly anyone is talking about it

June 30, 2023 | | Print Article

France is engulfed in its third night of violent protests, setting the country literally on fire after a police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old identified as Nahel M. during a traffic stop. And the media is barely covering it.

(Video Credit: Guardian News)

Paris has been hardest hit with looting, property destruction, and fires seen pretty much everywhere. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is doing damage control but pictures and videos circulating of Macron attending an Elton John concert have not helped the situation. Authorities are facing down enraged young people from France’s working-class suburbs.

Municipal buildings have been burned to the ground as police clash with youth not only in Paris but other French cities including Marseille, Reims, and Lyon. A dozen buses were burned at a depot north of Paris, according to the French transportation minister. Inside the city, video footage showed masked rioters breaking the windows of a major shopping mall and looting it.

Macron, suffering from his “Let them eat cake!” image, was forced to cut short his visit to Brussels for a European Union summit and return to Paris to hold an emergency cabinet meeting. It’s his second in two days, according to a spokesman who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

According to the media outlet, “The French leader now faces a fresh crisis after struggling this spring to contain violent protests over his unpopular decision to raise the age of retirement. This time the unrest stems from tensions that have been brewing for years between police and France’s working-class minorities, many of them Muslim, who reside in the country’s banlieues, or city outskirts.”

ADVERTISEMENT

(Video Credit: CNN)

ADVERTISEMENT

“Macron has condemned Nahel M.’s killing as inexcusable while calling for calm. Over the years, however, his government has shown steadfast support for law enforcement despite widespread criticism of police tactics as heavy-handed. Racial and religious tensions have also soared as Macron has restricted the activities of several mosques and Muslim associations that the government accuses of practicing ‘Islamist separatism,’ an ideology that the government says aims to build a parallel society where religious rules override civil ones,” the Wall Street Journal continued.

Conservative critics of Macron are demanding that the government restore order. There have been calls for Macron to declare a state of emergency.

Gérald Darmanin, Macron’s interior minister, deployed 40,000 police to the streets Thursday night. He vowed a firm response to the violence. On Friday, a spokesman for the interior minister said 875 people had been detained. The majority of those taken into custody are between 14 and 18 years old, French officials said. Approximately 200 police officers have been injured in the riots.

“These acts are intolerable and inexcusable,” French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne proclaimed on Twitter after a meeting with ministers.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The priority is to ensure national unity and the way to do it is to restore order,” Borne told reporters in an interview, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Macron vigorously condemned the violence while calling on parents to act responsibly concerning themselves and their children. He announced that the government will take new measures on Friday.

The riots started on Tuesday after a police officer shot and killed Nahel M., who was of Algerian descent, during a traffic stop in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris, according to authorities.

The officer who killed the teenager is under investigation. French prosecutors on Thursday filed charges of voluntary homicide against the police officer after a preliminary investigation found he didn’t use his weapon legally, Pascal Prache, the prosecutor of the Nanterre, contended. The teenager wasn’t carrying any weapons in the car he was driving at the time of the shooting.

ADVERTISEMENT

The victim’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the accused officer, rather than at police in general.

“He saw a little, Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said, according to NBC News. “A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives.”

A family friend told NBC News that the actions of the country’s law enforcement were starting to mirror those in the United States.

“They kill us, they stop and search abusively, they abuse their authority — it needs to stop,” Anais, 27, who didn’t want to give her last name told NBC News. The “problem here is becoming like the United States,” but added that “there are some good police officers.”

Tram and bus services were shut down Thursday evening in an attempt to contain the violence. So, rioters took the burning and looting to the center of Paris instead, as well as other cities. Buildings were looted and vandalized.

In Drancy, they used a truck to ram through the entrance of a shopping mall which was partially burned in the riot. In Marseille, rioters broke windows and set fires in the city center. In Vieux Port areas plumes of thick, black smoke rose into the night sky. In Roubaix, an office building went up in flames. In Pau, a Molotov cocktail caused significant damage to a police station, the local prefect stated.

Curfews are being enforced in a number of towns in the Paris region in response to the riots. They will be kept in place for at least the next few days.

The public transit operator in the Paris region announced on Friday that bus and tram service will end at 9 pm until further notice.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Education-ministry officials in Paris have ordered schools to cancel or reschedule any end-of-year school parties scheduled for Friday evening, because of the risk to schools from ‘spillover and riots’ linked to the protests, according to a letter to school principals seen by The Wall Street Journal.”

Meanwhile, France continues to reel from the violence as the world and the media seem to ignore the country as it burns.

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE

Latest posts by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles