Jul 01, 2023 at 11:56 PMUpdate: an hour ago
It is restless in French cities for the fifth night in a row on Saturday, after seventeen-year-old Nahel from a Paris suburb was shot dead by the police on Tuesday. Again, some 45,000 police officers had to be deployed because of the riots.
The death of Nahel, who was buried on Saturday, sparked great unrest in France. There were demonstrations and riots again on Saturday evening in various cities, including Paris, Nice, Marseille and Montpellier.
The teenager tried to drive away on Tuesday from the officers who had stopped his car for traffic violations. One of the officers then shot him in the chest. That was fatal to Nahel.
After Nahel’s death, riots broke out in his hometown of Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Violence soon spread to many other French cities. Many people are angry with the police action and accuse the force of being racist and too aggressive. Nahel was of Algerian descent.
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The Nahel family asked the media to stay away
Nahel’s family asked the media to stay away from Saturday’s funeral. The relatives hoped for “a day of reflection”. A few hundred people gathered at the great mosque of Nanterre for the funeral. The mosque was guarded by volunteers in yellow vests.
“This absolutely has to stop,” Marie, one of the bystanders and residents of Nanterre, told the news agency Reuters. “The government is very far removed from our reality”. A friend of Nahel said against Reuters: “The police are much more dangerous for people with the ‘wrong’ skin color”.
French President Emmanuel Macron postponed his state visit to Germany on Saturday because of the unrest. He previously denied that there is institutional racism in the French police.
37 people were arrested on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Photo: Getty Images
Situation seems a bit quieter than previous nights
It seems that the evening on Saturday will be a bit quieter than the previous nights. French media do report incidents and confrontations between demonstrators and the police in almost all major cities.
In Marseille, France’s second-largest city, police say the “situation is under control”. The city had prepared for major riots. 38 people have already been arrested and the police speak of “an agitated atmosphere”. Demonstrators have set fire to garbage, among other things.
On the shopping street Champs-Élysées in Paris, where many shopkeepers have boarded up their windows as a precaution, the police have arrested 37 people and seized many weapons.
There are reports of looting from Montpellier, in the south of the country. And in Nice, also on the Mediterranean Sea, a confrontation is taking place between the police and demonstrators who have set a large fire on a central axis in the city.
A total of 1,311 people were arrested last night, 406 of them in Paris.
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2023-07-01 21:56:00
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