"I Am Hurting For My France"

“On a general level, people tend to think there is no racism in France. And it’s one of the reasons people are so angry, because they feel and experience racism on a daily basis."

"Despite that, they still face institutions, public discourse and media which still say that there is no racism and that the race debate does not belong in France. And that’s the reason people are so angry and so outraged." 

Journalist and racial equality activist Rokhaya Diallo 

 

"We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down."

"The issue here is 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."

Dominique Sopo, head, campaign group SOS Racisme

 

"The professionals of disorder must go home. [While there’s no need yet to declare a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting in 2005] the state’s response will be extremely firm."

"[Officers made more than 180 arrests before Thursday and there would] doubtless [be more]."

"[Street violence injured scores of police and damaged nearly100 public buildings -- the number of officers in the streets will increase from 9,000 to 40,000. In the Paris region alone, the number of officers deployed will increase to 5,000]."

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin

The mother of 17-year-old Nahel, seen at left on a truck, gestures during a march on Thursday.  Michel Euler/AP

 

France is  burning, once again. From the banlieues where ghettoes of immigrants from the near east and the Maghreb tend to live in their converted versions of the places where they were born, poverty exists, joblessness, and hopelessness. Every now and again frustration and anger boils over and roving gangs set fire to vehicles until the anger subsides to more manageable levels. Crime festers in the banlieues, gangs proliferate wildly and even when firefighters respond to fires they would be attacked as 'foreigners' daring to enter Muslim enclaves.

 

The brutal and hostile alienation owed, France's critics said, to the racism, marginalization, lack of opportunity, poverty that France's Muslim population lived within. And so the government began investing huge sums into the areas of Muslim majorities, rebuilding infrastructure, including public transit systems to enable the slum dwellers to move about elsewhere, to feel free to travel, to reach destinations other than their crowded, choked enclaves. Young people were accepted into elite schools, encouraged to attend universities.

 

Not much, it seems, has changed. The banlieue-dwellers still feel victimized, still claim they feel the sting of racism, still run about in gangs dealing drugs, challenging one another, and quickly assemble in large protest mobs to loot and to charge the government with discrimination. Night after night of violent demonstrations against police in France, against authority in the country altogether. The outrage this time may be national in scope, however, in the aftermath of a shocking police shooting of a 17-year-old with no police record.

 

The motorcycle officer who shot the boy named as Nael, in Nanterre, has been arrested and charged. Casual video taken at the scene of a traffic stop belies the story given by the 38-year-old officer and a companion officer, that the vehicle the young man was driving erratically seemed to be deliberately heading straight for them, and they feared the safety of the public, while defending themselves. Footage, in fact, that contradicts their story has been widely seen, feeding the public outrage.

According to Pascal Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, two officers attempted to stop Nael because he looked so young and was driving a sporty Mercedes that had Polish licence plates, in a bus lane. He ran a red light to avoid being stopped and became ensnared in traffic. Both officers involved said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. But the story initially given by police sources that the teen drove at the two officers as they attempted to stop him, has been disproven.

In the video published on Twitter, the officers are shown at the side of the yellow Mercedes AMG. The car had come to standstill in the press of traffic. One officer stood there, his gun pointed at the driver and as the vehicle moved off, the officer fired, shooting the driver in the heart. Control of the vehicle was lost and it crashed, the 17-year-old pronounced dead at the scene. A horror story. According to the victim's family lawyers, just prior to the gunshot the officer was heard to say (in the video) "I'm going to put a bullet in your head". The second officer is heard saying: "Shoot him".

This screengrab from video posted on Twitter shows the moment when police interacted with a 17-year-old teen during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.  From @Ohana_Fgn/Twitter

There were two passengers in the car with the driver. One of them ran off in a panic and has not been found. The other was arrested and then released without charge. The aftereffect of the  shooting and the public anger could be measured in the reaction that ensued, with youths burning garbage bins, smashing bus stops and attempting to set up roadblocks. Others planned to protest outside local police stations with officers responding by firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

Soon other suburbs of Paris were experiencing rioting. A council building was destroyed when a fire was set in Mantes-la-Jolie. And it was not just banlieue residents who were protesting; expressions of disgust and fury came as well from celebrities and politicians. "I hope that justice worthy of the name will honour the memory of this child", stated The Intouchables film actor Omsar Sy. Adding his voice to that of the captain of France's national football team and star player at Paris Saint-Germaine. "I am hurting for my France", said Kylian Mbappe.

Protesters burn garbage bins and block a street during a protest in Paris on June 29. Fiachra GIBBONS/AFP/Getty Images