2023-07-11 18:00:24
Hame (Mohamed Bourokba) and Ekoue (Ekoue Labitey), member of the group La Rumeur, in July 2017 HANNAH ASSOULINE/OPALE.PHOTO
When Nahel M., 17, was killed on June 27 by police shooting, the rappers of the group La Rumeur remained silent. In the 2000s, Hamé Bourokba and Ekoué Labitey occupied the media and legal field for having mentioned in a fanzine “the hundreds of [leurs] brothers shot dead by the police, without any of the assassins having been worried”. After a complaint from the Ministry of the Interior for “attacking the honor and consideration of the national police”, the justice finally ruled in favor of the author of the article, Hamé Bourokba, after a cassation trial in 2010 .
Ten days before the tragedy of Nanterre, the group had just released a new album, was preparing to broadcast a documentary retracing their journey, from their cities in the Yvelines to film production via Sciences Po. Monde they entrust their reflections between resignation and hope.
How did you react to the Nanterre video?
Ekoué Labitey : The images are unequivocal. Two weeks later, we are still in shock… A 17-year-old boy.
Hamé Burokba: We know the existence of this violence, its reproduction, but to see it arise like this, with the moment, the second when the policeman shoots… We can’t get used to it.
In the days following the death of Nahel M., you refused to react immediately…
EL : I feel like we have to start all over again. We are in a kind of virtualized world where media and political time never stops. And the first question that drives me is where is the decency, the place for meditation?
Start all over again, that is to say?
EL : I’m talking about our history, in connection with our legal battle, which lasted eight years. From this story could arise a debate which would have made it possible, perhaps, to come out on top, to go beyond partisan divisions. Today, as I speak to you, it is resignation that prevails and I fear that the wave is too high, it is sweeping everything away. This event should lead us to rethink these questions from scratch.
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The questions of the relationship between the police and the populations of the districts?
H. B. : If we start from the images, what is suffocating is their overdetermination. It’s so predictable. Who kills who? In what state of mind do the police intervene? How does it feel to feel empowered to do that? What is predictable is that the police are authorized to act like that in these neighborhoods. We always put back to back two worlds that collide, but it’s not two worlds on an equal footing. The asymmetry is total.
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