PARIS, July 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — French President Emmanuel Macron announced more police to contain nightly riots over a teenager’s fatal shooting by an officer during a traffic stop, and urged parents to keep minors off the streets.
There had been “unacceptable exploitation of a death of an adolescent” in some quarters, Macron said after rushing back from an EU summit to chair a second crisis meeting in two days.
The unrest has come in response to the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, whose death has revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs.
Under fierce scrutiny at home and abroad, Macron has attempted to strike a balance between pressure for a harsh response and fears of triggering a stronger backlash.
“Additional means” would be mobilised by the interior ministry beyond the 40,000 officers deployed nationwide on Thursday, Macron said.
That force failed to prevent 492 structures being damaged, 2,000 vehicles being burned and 3,880 fires started nationwide, according to government figures.
Interior ministry numbers on Friday detailed 875 arrests overnight, while 249 police officers were injured, none of them seriously.
The ministry later said it would extend nationwide a 9:00 pm halt to Paris’s bus and tram services, and ban sales of large fireworks and inflammable liquids.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said armoured vehicles belonging to the French gendarmerie law-enforcement units would be deployed against rioters.
“Depending on the situation, large-scale events requiring personnel and potentially posing risks to public order” would be cancelled, her office added.
One such write-off hit two concerts by the popular singer Mylene Farmer, planned for Friday and Saturday at the Stade de France stadium north of central Paris.
Countries including Britain and Austria updated their travel advice to warn tourists away.
Macron said the government “calls on parents to take responsibility” for underage rioters, one-third of whom were “young or very young”.
And he vowed to work with social networks to curb “copycat violence” spread through services like TikTok and Snapchat — as well as saying some participants were “experiencing on the street the video games that have
intoxicated them”.
France has been rocked by successive nights of protests since Nahel was shot point-blank on Tuesday during a traffic stop captured on video.
In her first media interview since the shooting, Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told France 5 television: “I don’t blame the police, I blame one person: the one who took the life of my son.”
She said the 38-year-old officer responsible, who was detained and charged with voluntary manslaughter on Thursday, “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life”.
Nahel is set to be buried in a ceremony on Saturday, the mayor of his Paris suburb Nanterre said.
The government is desperate to avoid a repeat of 2005’s weeks-long urban riots, sparked by the death of two boys of African origin in a police chase, during which 6,000 people were arrested.
The UN rights office said Friday that the killing of the teen of North African descent was “a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement”, a charge rejected by France as “totally unfounded”.
On Thursday, two major police unions said they were “at war” with rioters, who they likened to “vermin”.
They threatened the government with “resistance” unless officers are granted still greater legal protection and more resources in future.
“This text is an appeal for civil war,” Greens party leader Marine Tondelier tweeted in response.
After a third night of car torching and shops being ransacked as well as hundreds of arrests, calls have grown from the conservative and far-right opposition to give authorities increased powers.
Despite a massive security deployment, violence and damage were reported in multiple areas.
The Paris region’s bus and tram lines remained “severely disrupted” on Friday, the RATP transport operator said, after a dozen vehicles were torched overnight in a depot and some routes were blocked or damaged.
Nahel was killed as he pulled away from police who had stopped him for a traffic infraction.
A video showed two police officers standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver.
A voice is heard saying: “You are going to get a bullet in the head.”
The police officer then appears to fire as the car abruptly drives off.
The officer’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, told BFM television late Thursday that his client had apologised as he was taken into custody.
“The first words he pronounced were to say sorry, and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family,” Lienard said. — NNN-AGENCIES
