France was gripped by violent unrest for the third consecutive night, which was sparked by the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy. The incident has unleashed a wave of anger throughout the country, reigniting long-standing tensions surrounding the treatment of ethnic minorities.
Protesters took to the streets on Thursday evening, setting up barricades, setting cars on fire, and looting stores. Security forces responded with tear gas and the detention of hundreds of individuals. President Emmanuel Macron condemned the unrest as “absolutely unacceptable” and convened crisis meetings in an effort to restore order. However, he stopped short of declaring a state of emergency.
The teenager, identified only as Nahel, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The officer involved in the shooting has been preliminarily charged with voluntary homicide.
The family’s legal team has not yet commented on whether they believe race played a role in the incident. This shooting has exacerbated long-simmering tensions between French police and young people residing in disadvantaged neighborhoods, both in the capital and elsewhere.
The victim’s mother, identified as Mounia M., directed her anger toward the accused officer rather than the police in general. She stated, “He saw a little, Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life. A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives.”
The family has Algerian roots, according to the teenager’s grandmother, as confirmed by Algeria’s Foreign Affairs Ministry expressing shared grief.
A family friend in France drew parallels between the actions of the country’s law enforcement and those in the United States. She said, “They kill us, they stop and search abusively, they abuse their authority—it needs to stop.” She added that the problem in France was becoming similar to that in the United States but acknowledged the presence of some good police officers.
The distinction between peaceful protests by the victim’s friends and family and the broader unrest surrounding related issues became increasingly difficult as the day progressed. What began as a march honoring Nahel in Nanterre eventually transformed into a night of clashes following his death. Cars and garbage cans were set ablaze, while the police responded with tear gas. The unrest extended as far as Marseille in the south, and minor confrontations were reported in Brussels.
Authorities have deployed 40,000 police officers and detained over 875 individuals, resulting in approximately 200 officer injuries. No information is available regarding other casualties.
Upon his return from a European Union summit, President Macron held his second crisis meeting in as many days. He urged parents to keep their children at home and revealed that he had been in contact with social media companies, requesting them to monitor and remove content inciting violence. Macron labeled the past two nights as “absolutely unacceptable and unjustifiable” and accused the protestors of opportunistically capitalizing on “the death of a teenager, which we all deplore.”
The government has refrained from declaring a state of emergency this time, as it did in 2005 following the death of two boys that triggered widespread rioting.
Meanwhile, the legal representatives of the officer involved, who remains anonymous under French law, expressed remorse and devastation on his behalf. Laurent-Franck Lienard, the attorney, stated on France’s BFM TV, “He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people. He really didn’t want to kill.”
Videos recorded by bystanders showed two police officers leaning into the driver-side window of a yellow car, with one appearing to fire a shot as the vehicle drives away. The car subsequently crashed into a nearby post, and the driver was pronounced dead at the scene, according to prosecutors.
#France
Police is shooting a person who refused to comply. pic.twitter.com/FM0OHMcfi8— Eugen Platon (@eugenplaton) June 27, 2023
Prosecutor Pascal Prache explained that the officers attempted to stop Nahel due to his youthful appearance and because he was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. Allegedly, he ran a red light in an attempt to evade being stopped but ended up stuck in traffic.
Prache’s preliminary investigation indicated that the officer did not meet the conditions for the legal use of the weapon. As a result, the officer has been charged preliminarily, signifying that magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but require further investigation before proceeding to trial.
The incident has reignited outrage among campaigners who accuse law enforcement of institutionalized discrimination and assert that the nation’s commitment to colorblind universalism only serves to reinforce widespread racism. Dominique Sopo, the head of the campaign group SOS Racisme, emphasized the need to address police behavior towards Black and Arab individuals, stating, “How do we make it so that we have a police force that, when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them, and, in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
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The United Nations human rights office called upon France to address deep-rooted issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement following the killing. The spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, stated in a press release that this moment demanded the country’s commitment to ensuring the “proportional, legal, and nondiscriminatory use of force by the police.”
