2023-07-08 07:08:00
Dozens of unions, associations, collectives and left-wing political organizations are calling for “citizen marches” this Saturday throughout France.
By VD with AFP Dozens of left-wing organizations are calling for “citizen marches” after Nahel’s death. (Illustrative photo). © Jean Benoit VIGNY / MAXPPP / PHOTOPQR/LE DAUPHINE/MAXPPP Published on 07/08/2023 at 07:08
“Citizens’ marches” marked by “mourning and anger” against police violence are announced on Saturday in several cities, in the absence of that planned in memory of Adama Traoré in Val-d’Oise, prohibited in a context of tensions after the nights of riots. Seven years after the death of Adama Traoré, a young black man who died shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes in July 2016, a memorial march was planned for Saturday afternoon in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise, north of Paris.
But the prefect of Val-d’Oise banned it on Thursday and his decision was confirmed Friday evening by administrative justice, seized urgently by Adama’s older sister, Assa Traoré. The judges in summary proceedings justified their decision by “the context of the riots which followed the death of Nahel”, 17, killed by a police officer during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris. The latter “considered that, although the violence has decreased in recent days, its extremely recent nature does not allow us to assume that any risk of disturbing public order has disappeared”, argued the administrative court of Cergy-Pontoise.
Assa Traoré present in Paris
The prefecture asked “the organizers to respect this court decision and to call publicly not to go to the scene”. In a video message posted on Twitter, Assa Traoré confirmed that “there will be no march (Saturday) in Beaumont-sur-Oise”. “The government has decided to add fuel to the fire” and “not to respect the death of my little brother”, she accused, evoking “a total lack of respect” and calling it a “pretext” the argument brandished by the prefect of a shortage of law enforcement to secure the procession.
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But this figure in the fight against police violence has not given up on demonstrating: Assa Traoré indicated that she would be present “Saturday at 3 p.m. Place de la République” to shout “to the whole world that our dead have the right to exist, even in death. However, she did not directly call on her supporters to join her, which could have been likened to the organization of a wild and therefore illegal demonstration.
“Grieving and Anger”
On the emblematic Place de la République in Paris, Assa Traoré should join a “march for justice” announced among around thirty other demonstrations against police violence listed in France on an online map, from Lille to Marseille and from Nantes in Strasbourg. 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” and denounce policies deemed “discriminatory against working-class neighborhoods.
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These organizations mobilized “for the maintenance of public and individual freedoms”, demand “an in-depth reform of the police, of their intervention techniques and of their armament”. Government spokesman Olivier Véran on Friday criticized organizations whose “only proposal”, according to him, is “to call for demonstrations (…) on Saturday in the big cities which have not yet recovered from the rampages”. He particularly pointed to the responsibility of elected officials, including those of rebellious France, who had called to join the forbidden march of Beaumont, accusing them of leaving “the republican arc”.
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Nahel’s death and the urban violence that followed – unprecedented since 2005 – cast a harsh light on the ills of French society, from the difficulties of working-class neighborhoods to the stormy relations between young people and the police. Since June 27, more than 3,700 people have been taken into custody in connection with these riots, including some 1,160 minors, according to figures from the Chancellery, which reported on Friday nearly 400 incarcerations.
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