2023-07-08 08:43:00
At least 2,000 people gathered in Paris calmly on Saturday afternoon, in memory of Adama Traoré and despite the ban from the police headquarters, while “citizen marches” marked by “mourning and [de] anger” against police violence are organized in several other cities in France. Assa Traoré, Adama’s sister and figure in the fight against police violence, announced that she would be present “at 3 p.m. Place de la République”, after the ban on the annual march planned for Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise) in memory of his brother who died shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes in July 2016.
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 march for young people, to denounce police violence. We want to hide our dead, ”she said, notably in front of the leader of the Insoumis in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, the deputies Éric Coquerel and Louis Boyard, wearing their tricolor scarf, like Sandrine Rousseau (EELV) .
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Despite the requests for dispersal and some verbalizations noted by AFP, the demonstrators, chanting in particular “Justice for Nahel”, then left in a procession, calmly, before Assa Traoré asked them to disperse “without violence”. . The majority of them left around 4:30 p.m.
Youssouf Traoré placed in police custody
“While everything went well”, Youssouf, one of Assa Traoré’s brothers, was arrested by the police, denounced Éric Coquerel on Twitter. The police headquarters confirmed his arrest for “violence against a person holding public authority and rebellion”, without detailing this violence.
According to a source close to the case, he is accused of having “dealed a blow” to a police commissioner on the Place de la République. According to the same source, he was injured in the eye during his arrest.
�� Youssouf Traoré was arrested with another member of the Adama Committee by BRAV-M at the end of the march. He was targeted while everything was going peacefully.
It is a persecution vis-à-vis the Traoré family and the committee. Youssouf went to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital… pic.twitter.com/5aD5gRp4Ea
— Eric Coquerel (@ericcoquerel) July 8, 2023
At the end of the afternoon, he was taken to the hospital but was ultimately not admitted and returned to the police station for continued custody, according to a police source. Footage circulating on social media shows him entering an ambulance on a raised stretcher with firefighters around him.
Present during the transfer, journalist and activist Taha Bouhafs told AFP that he saw “his face swollen with a bandage”. A little earlier, the Adama committee had indicated “know nothing about his state of health”, nor the reason for his arrest. “The march took place peacefully, it was a success, we do not understand his arrest,” the committee added.
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 gathering, which was not declared, because “presenting risks of disturbing public order”, recalling the “tense context” and the “five consecutive nights” of urban violence after the death of Nahel, 17 years old, killed by a police officer during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre. READ ALSO Adama Traoré case: a final twist?
Hundreds of people gathered in France against police violence
About thirty demonstrations were organized in the country. They were notably 640 in Nantes, 400 in Strasbourg, 200 in Bordeaux, a hundred in Dijon, 450 in Vénissieux. In Lille, the demonstration was banned by the prefecture. In Marseille, 750 people gathered, according to the prefecture, including the Insoumis MP for Marseille Manuel Bompard, “stunned” by the “denial” of the authorities on the problem of police violence. “Obviously, the political power intends to talk about everything but this, so it is useful that there are demonstrations,” he said. READ ALSO Death of Nahel in Nanterre: the political lessons of the 2005 crisis
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”, to 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 that have not yet recovered from the looting”. He particularly pointed to the responsibility of elected officials, including those of La France insoumise, accusing them of leaving “the republican arc”.
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