deployment of police armored vehicleslimitations on the social networks and relying on parents to calm angry teens. They are the recipes of the French president, Emmanuel Macronto stop the revolt of the ‘banlieues’, which broke out this week in France following the death of 17-year-old teenager Nahel M., shot down on Tuesday morning by a police officer who shot point blank inside your vehicle.
Since then, the wave of rage and urban violence of young people from popular neighborhoods against the police abuse. Last night there were more than 900 detainees, 500 public buildings set on fire and 1,900 vehicles burned. And there were also first two dead: a young man who fell from a looted shop in Rouen and a citizen who received a stray bullet from a protester in Guyana, a French overseas territory located in South America.
Less than a month after the intense struggle with the unions over the pension reform ended, Macron is once again facing a social outbreak. After the hesitations of the first days, he is now committed to hardening his tone. And he does not prioritize giving a political response to the entrenched problem of police violence in the ‘banlieues’.
“Parental Responsibility”
“Nothing can justify violence. (…) I ask firmness for all those who want to create disorder”, Macron assured this afternoon while chairing a crisis meeting. Although he is not betting, for the moment, on decreeing a state of emergency as required by the extreme right, the centrist leader has announced a booster of police deployment, in addition to judicial measures that increase the burden of responsibility for these disorders. Specifically, the security forces will deploy fifteen armored vehicles. They will also increase the number of agents on the ground after Thursday’s 40,000 — 5,000 of them in the Paris region — were overwhelmed.
“It’s the parental responsibility that (their children) stay at home. It is important for everyone’s peace of mind that this responsibility be exercised. I make a call to the sense of responsibility of mothers and fathers, “added the president. One aspect that has surprised these riots is the young age of their authors, from 14 to 25 years. Faced with the complicity in these incidents on the part of the parents, who feel treated as second-class citizens and denounce the abandonment of these suburbs, the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, announced the adoption of a circular insisting on the legal responsibility of parents for the infractions committed by their children.
The current context of the beginning of the school holidays favors the reproduction of the riots. Even this Friday there were the first daytime store lootingwith an Apple Store robbed in Strasbourg and also a shopping center in the north of the Paris region.
Will the heavy hand be enough?
Besides the indignation Due to the death of Nahel, these riots have been favored by a spectacularization and playful dimension of the experience of these destructions by their authors. They brag about it on social media like Tik Tok, Snapchat or Instagram, in which they are also organized. “We have the feeling that some of them are living on the street the video games that have intoxicated them,” Macron criticized. He has asked the platforms for collaboration so that they delete messages and help them identify some of their authors.
The Executive has also decreed that buses and trams will stop operating throughout the country from eight in the evening. And in a growing number of localities—but none of the big cities—they have adopted nightly curfews. The Macron government is under pressure, and even more so due to the speed of events. In less than three days, the shock over the death of Nahel, as well as the irruption of the latent and recurring problem of police violence, has gone from a growing disturbance of public order.
The far-right parties of Marine LePen and Eric Zemmour pressure the centrist Executive to adopt a state of emergency, following the example of how they acted before the revolt in the ‘banlieues’ in 2005. On the other hand, the left-wing opposition considers that “speeches of escalating security will be useless.” And he calls for a political response against police violence, such as a repeal of a 2017 legislative reform, which since then tripled the number of deaths from police shootings (from 8 to 26 last year).
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Caught between these two fronts, Macron begins to opt for a heavy hand. While this position may seem logical given the incipient chaos, it may prove insufficient. Even more considering the state of mind among many young people of the popular neighborhoods. “Not only do the police abuse us, but now they are going to lock us up in our neighborhoods. This will only make us even more angry,” Leila, 17, a young student who was reviewing for the high school exam on a terrace, explained to EL PERIÓDICO. in front of the Montreuil Town Hall.
This town to the east of the ‘banlieue’ in Paris, fashionable among many young people, has been the scene of destruction and barricades during the last nights. “It’s like the end of the world has become,” laments Michelle, 75, a resident of the area. “I don’t think it’s right that they dedicate themselves to destroying shops, but I fully understand that they set fire to police stations and government offices,” Leila replies. “We have been protesting for the last six months and nobody listened to us,” adds this young woman, who links the current unrest to the false closure of the push for pensions. Once the boiling pot of French society has been uncovered, it will be difficult to close it.