2023-07-05 17:41:59
With the discovery of a new death in Marseilles due to a flash-ball shot (a non-lethal defense weapon made in France and used by security forces) in the riots on Saturday, the country went through a calm night from Tuesday to Wednesday compared to the previous days.
This second victim I was 27 years old and died the night from Saturday to Sunday due to the riots, with his motorcycle. He was found on Cours Lieutaud, an avenue just a few hundred meters from the Old Port and the shopping streets in the heart of the city, where several dozen businesses were looted over the weekend.
“I have the video that proves that my husband was not doing anything,” said Nour, his wife. “When we tried to save him, he was already dead,” she recounted, still in shock. The couple had a son and were expecting a second.
A police officer uses a flash-ball gun or bullet launcher for defense. Photo: AP
In this context, at least 90 left-wing organizations, which bring together France Unsubmissive, the Ecologists, the CGT or Solidaires, call for a march for next Saturday to express “mourning and anger” and denounce policies considered “discriminatory” against popular neighborhoods.
police reform
demand deep police reform and the 2017 Cazenauve law, which allows officers to shoot if they feel in danger or see a person in danger. A legislation that was born in the framework of the attacks in France.
Today, justice considers that the policeman arrested for voluntary manslaughter violated that law by executing Nahel Merzouk, the 17-year-old Frenchman, killed at a traffic checkpointwhich gave rise to the new social outbreak in France.
Flowers on the grave of Nahel Merzouk, buried in a Nanterre cemetery. Photo: AP
It will not be a single demonstration but “citizen marches” throughout the country.
with a government that can’t find a way out of the crisis and does not have a parliamentary majority, the communist left and France Unsubmissive have divorced in the face of the riots. The communists believe that the republican order must be respected. Do not burn public buildings. But Jean Luc Mélenchon, ideologue of France Unsubmissive, considers the revolt legitimate.
The reasons for the march
These left-wing organizations will mobilize “for the maintenance of public and individual liberties.” They ask that the “Government assume its responsibilities and give immediate responses to put an end to the confrontation,” according to the statement.
The death of 17-year-old Nahel at the hands of the police sparked a wave of riots and looting in France. Photo: Reuters
Among the measures requested by these unions, associations or political parties is “a profound reform of the police, their intervention techniques and their weapons”.
In the spotlight of these 90 organizations, is the 2017 law on the relaxation of the rules regarding the use of firearms by the police, whose repeal they demand. But they also question the general inspection of the national police (IGPN), which they want to be replaced by an independent body.
A service against discrimination
They also want “the creation of a service dedicated to discrimination affecting young people within the administrative authority, chaired by the Defender of Rights.”
For these organizations, “the revolts that have shaken the working-class neighborhoods” since Nahel’s death are the result of a “abandonment of these populations” and “decades of the excesses of a police policy. They also question “systemic racism that runs through the whole of society.
A patrol car passes by the makeshift memorial, in the place where Nahel was shot in the chest. Photo: Zakaria Abceklafi / AFP
While waiting for the “citizens’ marches” on Saturday, the organizations invite people to join the rallies and marches, “all over the country” starting this Wednesday, “following the example of the march organized by the Committee of Truth and Justice for Adama, in Beaumont-sur-Oise, and that of the National Coordination against police violence on July 15”.
The concern of a European commissioner
The behavior of the police in the French suburbs, their brutal and constant identity checks, the integration of these young French migrants from the third generation, who live in the popular suburbs but feel discriminated against and with an identity that is not even from the country of his grandparents or of France, concerns the European Union.
“You really have to think about maintaining order in France,” said the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders in an interview on Belgian radio La Première. From the Yellow Vests to the pension reform, he believes that there is a very high level of violence in France, as the riots in recent days have once again demonstrated, he said.
The European Commissioner for Justice mentioned in particular the “behavior of a certain number of police officers”“as well as that of people who destroy shops and public buildings.”
“In Brussels, for example, there are probably two or three demonstrations a day. But there is a way to manage these demonstrations -which fortunately are not all violent- that perhaps involves more prevention, administrative arrests when necessary, than through direct confrontation”, he added.
Did the military participate in the repression?
With France on “attack alert”, the armed forces patrol the streets of the country and the airports in the Sentinel operation. They are armed with war rifles and bulletproof vests. but officially they cannot participate in the repression of the protests.
The army has opened this Wednesday an investigation into the alleged involvement of soldiers in maintaining order in Lorient.
a dozen of them would have participated in arrests to help the police on the night from Friday to Saturday.
The French army has opened a “command investigation”, following an alleged presence of marine commandos and marine riflemen, in support of law enforcement at Lorient, a naval base housing 4,000 soldiers.
Several videos show those arrests “very professional”, handcuffed by ribbons like those used by the French forces in Afghanistan, while the handcuffed shout their innocence. The “riot control volunteers” handed them over to the policemen handcuffed.
In fact, a dozen hooded youths dressed in sportswear youths were arrested in Lorient.
“No, no militia is working alongside or instead of the police,” Fabrice Loher, mayor of Lorient, defended himself on Facebook.
“We let it happen at the beginning of the night, because it relieved us,” an anonymous police source explained to Telegram instead.
A military source assures that “elements of Forfusco may have participated in this group in a personal capacitywithout the hierarchy having been informed in advance. No unit has been hired neither formally nor informally”.
Although a survey indicates that the 70% of the French asked for the intervention of the army to restore order, the army is not designed to maintain order. Unlike the mobile gendarmerie or the CRS, they are armed to kill and not to prevent.
The controversial donation fund
Tuesday night it closed the donation fund for Florian, the policeman who executed Nahel and is under arrest for voluntary manslaughter. In a few days he got 1.636.240 euros of 85,107 people. He had been summoned by the far-right activist Jean Meshiha, who, faced with the controversy and the threat of judicial intervention by the Nahel family, closed it at midnight.
The success of this fund produced the indignation of the political class.
The fact that the collection has been created by a person close to the extreme right” does not “contribute” to “appeasement,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne judged on Monday.
On Tuesday, Gérald Darmanin replied that “it was not a member of the government who created this fund” and that “a possible closure of the account was a matter of justice.”
In the evening, Nahel’s family lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, announced that he had filed a complaint for “organized gang fraud, misappropriation of personal data processing and concealment of these crimes against Jean Messiha and against all the people who will be identified by the investigation as responsible, Participants in these crimes”.
A petition for the closure had been launched sponsored by a group of associations and citizens, and has reached more than 60,000 signatures.
Nahel’s father, an absent father, appeared as a civil party “for justice to be done and to say that I am alive.”
Paris, correspondent
ap
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