2023-06-29 20:57:07
The time for contemplation will have been short-lived. In front of the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture, in Nanterre, clashes quickly broke out on Thursday, June 29, at the arrival of the white march organized to pay tribute to Nahel M., this 17-year-old young man who died following a a roadside check and a refusal to comply. After a first episode of tensions quickly defused within the procession itself, the police began to disperse, with tear gas, the approximately six thousand people who flocked to Nelson-Mandela Square, where Nahel M’s car crashed, Tuesday 27th June.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The drama of Nanterre hour by hour, from the roadside check of Nahel M. to the “white march” for the killed teenager
Small groups of participants dressed in black immediately responded by sending mortars and projectiles towards the security forces. The tension escalated further when trash can fires were lit, cars set on fire and shop and bank windows smashed. After two already tense nights, the clashes which marked the end of the day in Nanterre seemed to herald the start of a long evening. “Tonight, it’s going to be a fight”, let go of a participant watching the windows of a Monoprix shattered.
Clashes on the sidelines of the march in tribute to Nahel. In Nanterre on June 29, 2023. CAMILLE MILLERAND FOR “THE WORLD”
The white march, starting from the Pablo-Picasso estate, where Nahel M.’s mother lives, had however started smoothly. Mediators from the city, in red T-shirts, were present throughout the parade. The organizers, for their part, had immediately instructed the demonstrators to “keep calm”. The crowd, dense and heterogeneous, included local and national elected officials, associations, students and far-left activists. Among them, the deputies La France insoumise (LFI) Mathilde Panot and Eric Coquerel, the deputy Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) Marine Tondelier, or the anti-racist activist Assa Traoré.
The emotion of an entire neighborhood
But it is first of all the emotion of an entire neighborhood that was expressed this afternoon. “The little kid, I knew him, he wasn’t violent. His death saddens us so much.” says Sabrina (she did not wish to give her name), 50, school agent. Several teenagers present in the procession held white flowers in their hands and demanded “justice for Nahel”.
After emotion, anger. “Why is Palmade out in a nightclub while we have a little one who got killed? », gets carried away a man in the crowd. Another engages: “Macron, where is he? He is in Marseilles! That he comes ! » Yet another: “Here, it’s not the little ones who rob the police, it’s the police who rob the little ones!” What is this madness ? »
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