A total of 5,900 people marched in the country, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.
She spoke standing on a bench in the square, in front of several left-wing elected officials and surrounded by a large police force. “We are marching for young people, to denounce police violence. We want to hide our dead”, she declared, notably in front of the leader of the rebellious in the National Assembly Mathilde Panot, the deputies Eric Coquerel and Louis Boyard , wearing their tricolor scarf, like Sandrine Rousseau (EELV).
Despite the requests for dispersal and some verbalizations noted by AFP, the demonstrators – at least 2,000 according to AFP -, chanting in particular “Justice for Nahel” or “Fuck the police”, then left in procession, calmly, before Assa Traoré asks them to disperse “without violence”. The majority of them had left the scene around 4:30 p.m.
Two people were arrested, including Youssouf, one of Assa Traoré’s brothers, “while everything went well”, lamented Eric Coquerel on Twitter.
He was placed in police custody for violence against a person holding public authority and rebellion, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP. According to a source close to the case, he is accused of having “stripped” a police commissioner.
Several journalists have also denounced on social networks, with supporting image proof, having been violently repelled by the police while covering these arrests.
The police headquarters had banned this undeclared gathering in the morning, because “presenting risks of disturbing public order”, recalling the “tense context” and the “five consecutive nights” of urban violence after the death of Nahel M., 17, killed by a policeman during a traffic check on June 27 in Nanterre.
An investigation has been opened against Assa Traoré, “organizer” of the banned gathering, the PP said in a statement.
“Shut up for the police”
About thirty demonstrations were organized in the country – they were in particular 640 in Nantes, 400 in Strasbourg, 200 in Bordeaux, a hundred in Dijon, 450 in Vénissieux (near Lyon).
In Lille, the demonstration was banned by the prefecture.
In Marseille, 750 people gathered according to the prefecture, including the rebellious deputies Manuel Bompard, “stunned” by the “denial” of the authorities on the problem of police violence. “Obviously the political power intends to talk about everything except that, so it is useful that there are demonstrations,” he said.
“That’s enough, gunshots, LBDs etc. We need local police,” said Geneviève Manka, retired, in the Strasbourg demonstration where a sign called for “close for the police”.
In Angoulême, there were nearly 300 to demand “justice” for Alhoussein Camara, a 19-year-old Guinean fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic check in mid-June.
Nearly a hundred associations, unions and political parties classified on the left, including LFI, EELV, CGT and Solidaires, called for these “citizen marches”, to express “mourning and anger”, denounce policies deemed “discriminatory “against working-class neighborhoods and asking for “an in-depth reform of the police, their intervention techniques and their armament”.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran on Friday criticized organizations whose “only proposal”, according to him, is “to call for demonstrations (…) in the big cities which have not yet recovered from the looting. “.
Nahel’s death and the urban violence that followed – unprecedented since 2005 – shed light on the ills of French society, from the difficulties of working-class neighborhoods to the stormy relations between young people and the police.
On Saturday, the Quai d’Orsay strongly contested the “unfounded” criticism of a UN committee of experts who had heavily criticized the management of the riots by the police, calling in particular for the prohibition of “profiling racial”.
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