For four continuous nights, France has been seeing violence triggered by the shooting of Nahel M, whose family and friends gathered for his funeral on Saturday. To maintain the security of the Paris suburb region, 45,000 police were deployed alongside weapon equipped vehicles through the night to fight the second deadliest crisis under President Emmanuel Macron’s regime after the “Yellow Vest” protests in 2018 which shook France.
In contrast to the previous night’s 875 arrests, France’s interior ministry reported that 1,311 persons had been detained in this night’s “lower intensity” rioting.
In the Nanterre neighbourhood of the French capital, Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan heritage, was shot during a traffic stop on Tuesday. On a soggy Saturday morning following additional rioting the previous night, bus travel was still stalled and the area was calm.
A gang of about 30 young men warned guests not to take pictures as they stood guard at the Nanterre funeral home’s entrance.
The shooting incident sparked rage over violence and racism by police. The mixed race communities from urban areas have been complaining of the same for long but Macron had refuted of systemic racism within French law enforcement agencies.
“If you have the wrong skin colour, the police are much more dangerous to you,” said a young man, who also declined to be named, adding that he was a friend of Nahel’s.
The disturbance has expanded across the country, including to towns like Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, and Lille, and has resulted in the burning of buildings and automobiles as well as the robbing of stores.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated that over 200 police officers had been hurt, and that the average age of those detained was 17. Since the rioting began, looters have set 2,000 automobiles on fire and trashed dozens of stores.
In Marseille, which is home to many individuals of North African heritage, 80 people were detained on Friday night. Social media photographs of the southern city’s ancient port area revealed an explosion, but authorities stated they did not believe any injuries had occurred.
Rioters in the second-largest city in France took hunting guns but no ammo from a gun store, according to the police.
As a result of “pillaging and violence” in Marseille, where three police officers were slightly hurt early on Saturday, Mayor Benoit Payan urged the government to dispatch additional troops. Police used an armoured personnel carrier and a helicopter in Lyon, the third-largest city in France, and they evicted protesters from the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
In order to attend a second cabinet crisis meeting in as many days, Macron departed the European Union summit in Brussels early on Friday. He also requested that social media platforms remove “the most sensitive” images of rioting and provide the identity of people who are inciting violence.
