The French Interior Minister describes tonight as “quieter”
France woke up this Sunday after the fifth consecutive night of protests, urban violence and acts of vandalism, after theto death at the hands of the police of a 17-year-old teenager, Nahel M.Tuesday in Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris. At least 719 people were arrested last night throughout the French territory. Despite decreasing the number of arrests, violence went up a notch when trying attack a mayor’s house in a locality to the east in the east of the Parisian region.
At half past one in the morning, in L’Haÿ-les-Roses –a city of just over 30,000 inhabitants, a group of young people launched with a car on fire against the residence of the mayorthe conservative vincent jeanbrun. The vehicle did not hit the house, but when the events occurred, inside the home I found the mayor’s wife and the two small children, five and seven years old. The wife – also a politician Mélanie Nowack – broke her tibia trying to flee and one of her children was slightly injured. The prosecution has opened an investigation for “attempted murder”.
“Tonight a line of horror and ignominy has been crossed,” said Jeanbrun, who has just been named Republican party spokesman. “I will not back down and I will continue to defend the Republic,” she said on Twitter. The act aroused the unanimous condemnation of most of the country’s politicians. “A red line has been crossed,” said the prefect of the Paris Police, Laurent Nuñez. while the Prime Minister Elisabeth Bornewent to L’Haÿ-les-Roses to support Jeanbrun and assured that “the Government will not allow any violence to happen” and “the greatest firmness” will be applied in the sanctions.
Since the riots began there have been hundreds of attacks on institutions and public buildings, including mayors. Despite the incident, L’Haÿ-les-Roses, on Saturday night, was “calmer” than the previous one, in the opinion of Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior. His department registered fewer clashes, destruction and looting than the day before in most of the country’s cities, particularly in Lyon and Marseille, the two most affected agglomerations on Friday. However, a total of 577 vehicles and 74 buildings were set on fire and 45 police officers were injured. Two of them were hit in Paris “by what could be lead shot”, according to a police source, and one of his companions, the target of a firearm shot in Nimes, was saved by wearing the protection of a bulletproof vest.
The night with the greatest intensity in the riots was from Thursday to Friday. Since then, these urban violence —comparable to the revolt of the ‘yellow vests‘ in 2018 and that of the ‘banlieues’ in 2005— have decreased in an incipient manner. The 45,000 deployed police officers are increasingly in contact. This also explains the high number of detainees of the last two nights: 1,311 people from Friday to Saturday and 719 from Saturday to Sunday.
Of the arrests, at least 56 occurred in Marseille, 21 in Lyon and 315 in Paris, where there were scenes of tension on the Champs Elysées. Not surprisingly, unlike what happened with the 2005 revolt, this time the riots have spread rapidly beyond the Paris region. They also take place in the centers of large cities, with looting of numerous stores. This is the case in Marseille since Thursday and where this weekend a group of young people destroyed a Volkswagen dealership and took numerous vehicles.
“We are going to blow up snapchat accounts“, which are used to organize riots, assured the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti. He also warned of possible prison sentences and fines of 20,000 euros for the parents of adolescents who commit street violence. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, first, forcefully condemned the “voluntary homicide” of Nahel, whose chilling images show that the teenager did not represent any threat to the agent who killed him. But in the face of the spiral of urban violence, he has hardened his speech and tried to depoliticize the revolt.
It does not seem that Nahel’s death is going to be a turning point with regard to police abuse in the ‘banlieues’, accentuated by the resort to the easy trigger of the agents in recent years. The UN called on the French authorities on Friday to “seriously confront the deep problems of racism and racial discrimination of the security forces”. “There is no racism in the police. We only fight against crime”, the police prefect of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, responded this Sunday in statements to the ‘BFM TV’ chain. A denial of the problem that threatens to entrench it. And that these social outbreaks are reproduced in the future .