President Emmanuel Macron sent a message through social networks and described as unjustifiable the violent acts against police stations, schools and against the Republic, which originated after a 17-year-old boy was killed by a policeman at a traffic control in a city west of paris
After two nights of riots and at least 150 people arrested in France, in rejection of the death of a young man shot by the police, the president Emmanuel Macron sent a message through social networks to the country in repudiation of the violent acts.
«Violence against police stations, schools, town halls, against the Republic, is unjustifiable. Thank you to the mobilized police officers, gendarmes, firefighters and elected officials. Meditation, justice and calm must guide the next few hours,” said the president of that country on Twitter.
The violence against the commissariats, the schools, the maids, against the Republic, are unjustifiable.
Merci aux policers, aux gendarmes, aux sapeurs-pompiers et aux élus mobilisés.
Le cueillement, la Justice et le calm doivent guider les prochaines heures.
—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 29, 2023
Start of the riots
Last Tuesday, June 27, a policeman shot dead Nahel, a 17-year-old boy who refused to obey the orders of two officers during a traffic control in Nanterre, a city west of Paris known for its business district of La Défense.
Since then, tension has been high in the suburbs of the capital, where the authorities deployed 2,000 agents at night to prevent further disturbances, but these also spread to other areas such as Lyon, Toulouse or Lille.
In addition to cars and even a bus in Grigny, southeast of Paris, schools were set on fire in various cities such as Tourcoing or Evreux, some 90 kilometers west of the capital, and several police stations, such as Rouen.
*Read also: In France they marched to demand justice for the death of a young man at the hands of the police
“We are tired of being treated like this. This is for Nahel, we are Nahel”, shouted the young people who clashed sporadically in the northeast of Paris with the police for more than three hours, a journalist from the AFP.
Around 150 people were arrested, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who denounced “unbearable violence against symbols of the Republic” and criticized those who did not call for calm.
Nahel’s death sparked outrage, from Macron to French soccer team captain Kylian Mbappé, and relaunched the recurring debate about police violence. Thirteen people died in similar circumstances in 2022.
The 38-year-old police officer suspected of having shot Nahel has since been in police custody, during which he was interrogated in the framework of an open investigation for voluntary homicide, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Police sources initially said an officer opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to ram two members of the motorized police near a commuter train station.
But a video posted on social media, which AFP verified, shows an officer holding the driver at gunpoint and shooting him at point-blank range as he pulls away. In the recording, someone is heard exclaiming: “You’re going to take a bullet to the head!”, although it is not clear who is saying this.
A similar situation occurred in 2005 after two teenagers were electrocuted while fleeing from the police in Clichy-sous-Bois, northwest of Paris.
At that time, the then French president, Jacques Chirac, declared a state of emergency, for the first time in the country since the end of the Algerian war of independence. The two accused police officers were acquitted in 2015.
With information from Agencies
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