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France’s President Emmanuel Macron blamed social media and video games for “intoxicating” young people and fueling the unrest as he urged parents to leave their children at home after the third night of unrest following the police killing of a teenager.
The President cut short his trip to Brussels and called an emergency cabinet meeting at Paris’ Élysée Palace to discuss measures to calm tensions that had led to burning cars, looting and clashes between protesters and police. Still, ahead of the teen’s funeral on Saturday, the country is bracing for another night of violence.
The escalating crisis is a test for Macron, a leader whose ambitions on the world stage have been challenged by dysfunctions at home in recent months. And it’s a painful reckoning moment for France, as the death of a teenager reignites heated debates about race, identity and policing.
France arrests hundreds amid unrest over police killing of teenage boy
The protests have spread from Paris to several French cities outside the capital including Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse since the death of a 17-year-old boy, identified only as Nahel M., who was shot by a police officer Tuesday after being stopped at a traffic stop. The officer has since been arrested and has apologized to the boy’s family.
France’s interior ministry said it had deployed 40,000 officers across the country and cities have suspended public transport and announced curfews. After the third night of protests, over 800 people were arrested or detained and at least 200 police officers were injured, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said. Officials in France’s second-largest city, Marseille, said Friday that public transport would be halted from 7 p.m. local time and public protests would be banned.
“All options” are on the table for the government to restore order, said French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called Earlier on Friday he called the violence “intolerable and inexcusable” on Twitter. Macron did it too denigrated Attacks against the police and damage to public buildings as “unjustifiable”.
By speaking up early and cutting short his trip to the EU summit, Macron was trying to signal that he understood what was at stake.
“Generally, leaders don’t speak up, they let justice do the work,” said Philippe Marlière, professor of French politics at University College London. “In France, there is a kind of consensus that you don’t criticize the police.”
But Macron’s message is confused. For example, he was filmed attending an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday night when protests were taking place there.
And in his comments on Friday, he focused on the need for parents to control their children and the risks of social media, not racial injustice in policing.
In France, some saw parallels between the killings and police brutality in the United States.
“Aside from the wholly American racial context, events are reminiscent of the killing of George Floyd, a black man, who was choked to death by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020,” reads a Le Monde editorial published Thursday.
The paper called on France to clarify its 2017 public safety law, specifically rules on the use of firearms. “In France, no ordinary citizen or police officer should die in a traffic stop,” it said.
Fatal shootings are far less common in France than in the United States, and the case has sparked a massive public outrage not seen in the country since the killing of Floyd, which sparked global protests in 2020 and a global dispute over sparked racial and police behavior.
French activists have since called for an end to what they call discriminatory police tactics, which disproportionately target minorities in France, mostly people of African and Arab descent.
In photos: Streets and buildings smoke after chaotic protests in France
Nationwide protests erupted after videos of the incident went viral on the internet in France this week and appeared to show two police officers standing next to a stationary yellow Mercedes-AMG car, with at least one of the officers pointing a gun through the driver’s window. The car begins to drive away and the officer pulls the trigger at point-blank range. Later footage shows how the car, which had at least two other passengers in addition to Nahel, crashed on the side of the road.
According to District Attorney Pascal Prache, officers tried to stop the driver for a police check, but he sped away. After chasing the car through the streets of Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris, officers pulled up next to the car as it stopped in traffic on a major thoroughfare.
Nahel’s mother Mounia, wearing a white T-shirt that read “Justice for Nahel,” led a protest rally in his memory on Thursday that was attended by thousands. Nahel is believed to be of Algerian and Moroccan descent.
French celebrities such as soccer star Kylian Mbappé and actor Omar Sy have expressed their solidarity and outrage. Assa Traoré, whose half-brother Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died in police custody in 2016, also released a video in support, drawing parallels between the cases and denouncing police brutality and racism.
“He gave me a big kiss this morning. He said, ‘Mom, I love you,'” Nahel’s mother said, recalling the last time she saw her son alive on Tuesday. “We left at the same time – he went shopping at McDonald’s. I went to work like everyone else. An hour later, they told me… that my son had been shot.”
Victoria Bisset, Annabelle Timsit, Niha Masih and Ruby Mellen contributed to this report.
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