2023-06-18 22:03:08
They demand “justice and peace. Several hundred people, families and relatives of victims of settling of accounts and homicides committed in working-class neighborhoods and their supporters, demonstrated this Sunday in Marseille.
Marching behind a large white “Justice and Peace” banner, the participants, gathered at the call of collectives, associations, but also left-wing parties, strolled calmly, chanting in particular the names of victims killed during the years, between the Porte d’Aix and the regional prefecture in Marseille.
“We want to deliver a message for a necessary awareness of the inhabitants, the public authorities, the elected officials, so that things begin to change”, declared Laetitia Linon, member of the Alehan collective, at the origin, among others, of the demonstration, and whose 14-year-old nephew was killed in August 2021 in a city of Marseille, on a lookout point for drug trafficking, a collateral victim of the war between traffickers according to his relatives. “The problem is global, it’s not just about assassinations,” she says, citing in particular the desertion of public services in these neighborhoods, school dropouts or poor housing.
“These people destroyed a family”
“Whether it’s a stray bullet or a settling of scores between true dealers, families don’t have to suffer that, ”says Nadia Zouala, president of Young Citizen Reporters, an association from Perpignan who came to participate in the demonstration. She carries, like many, a sign with the photo of a young man, victim of a homicide in his district of Perpignan. “We are here to say stopso that our children can grow up in serenity”, continues, a few meters away, Habib Boutouba, the father of this young man, Mohamed, killed in December 2021.
“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” laments Hassina Sadani, also a member of the Alehan collective, whose niece Sarah was killed in the Marseille district of Belle de Mai of a burst of Kalashnikov, she too collateral victim of the war which the traffickers are waging in the Marseille city.
“She loved to live, she was fulfilled, these people destroyed a family, I am fighting for there to be justice for this young girl, everyone must stand up: we cannot let our children leave like That ! », asserts Hassina Sadani.
A hundred people had already gathered on June 10 in front of the town hall of Marseille to support the families of the victims of settling of accounts and call on public authorities to react more. Twenty-three homicides have taken place in settling of scores linked to drug trafficking since the beginning of the year in Marseille, according to an AFP count.
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