NANTERRE, France – On Saturday, hundreds of mourners from France’s Islamic community, in solemn mourning and visibly saddened, gathered from a mosque to a hillside cemetery for the funeral of a 17-year-old whose killing by police sparked days of unrest and looting in the Region has triggered the nation.
To underscore the seriousness of the crisis, President Emmanuel Macron canceled an official trip to Germany after a fourth straight night across France. Officials said they would again send 45,000 police officers onto the streets across the country to prevent a fifth night of violence.
A total of around 2,400 people have been arrested since the teenager’s death on Tuesday. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted late Saturday that 200 riot police would be mobilized in the port city of Marseille, where television footage of tear gas and officers on the streets as nightfall was showing. According to the police, 29 people were arrested there, and at least 37 were arrested in Paris near the Champs-Élysées, where police cars were parked in front of luxury shops in one of the capital’s most well-known districts.
At a hilltop cemetery in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teenager, identified only as Nahel, was killed, hundreds lined the street to pay tribute to him while mourners carried his white coffin from a mosque to the burial site, where journalists in some cases entry was forbidden and even chased away. Some of the men carried folded prayer rugs.
“Men first,” an officer told dozens of women waiting to enter the cemetery. But Nahel’s mother, dressed in white, entered to applause and went to the tomb. Many of the men were young and Arab or black and came to mourn a boy who could have been them.
At the cemetery gate, the coffin was lifted over the crowd and carried to the grave. The men followed, some holding little boys’ hands. As they left, some wiped their eyes. There was no sign of the police anywhere.
The unrest weighed on Macron’s diplomatic profile. The office of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Macron called on Saturday to request a postponement of the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years. Macron was due to fly to Germany on Sunday evening to visit Berlin and two other German cities.
Macron’s office said he spoke to Steinmeier and “given the internal security situation, the President (Macron) said he wanted to stay in France in the coming days.”
Nahel was shot dead during a traffic check. The video showed two officers at the window of the car, one pointing a gun at the driver. As the teenager drove forward, the officer fired once through the windshield. This week, Nahel’s mother told France 5 television that she was angry with the officer who shot her son, but not with the police in general.
“He saw a little Arab-looking child, he wanted to take his own life,” she said.
Nahel’s family has roots in Algeria.
For decades, race was a taboo subject in France, formally committed to a doctrine of color-blind universalism. Critics say the doctrine has obscured generations of systemic racism.
The officer accused of killing Nahel has been charged with a preliminary premeditated manslaughter charge, meaning investigating judges have strong suspicions of wrongdoing but need to conduct further investigations before a case goes to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial inquiries led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon was not legally justified.
Hundreds of police officers and firefighters were injured in the violence that erupted after the killing. The authorities have not provided any information on the injuries suffered by the demonstrators. In French Guiana, an overseas territory, a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet.
The response to the killing was a stark reminder of the enduring poverty, discrimination, unemployment and other lack of opportunity in neighborhoods across France where many residents have roots in former French colonies – such as where Nahel grew up.
“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. This is what hopeless young people were waiting for. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have[jobs]our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, a 39-year-old transport worker in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of rioting in 2005 that rocked France and was caused by the deaths of two teenagers who were electrocuted at a power substation while fleeing police. One of the boys lived in the same housing project as Seck.
Like many Clichy residents, he lamented the violence against his town, where the remains of a burned car lay beneath his home and the town hall entrance was torched amid riots this week.
“Young people destroy everything, but we are already poor, we have nothing,” he said, adding that “young people are afraid of dying at the hands of the police.”
Despite the escalating crisis, Macron hesitated to declare a state of emergency, an option he exercised in 2005. But the government stepped up its law enforcement efforts and deployed mass police, including some recalled from furlough.
France’s Justice Minister Dupond-Moretti warned on Saturday that young people who share incitements to violence on Snapchat or other apps could be prosecuted. Macron blames social media for fueling violence.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire promised government support for shopkeepers.
“There is no nation without order, without common rules,” he said.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has ordered a nationwide overnight shutdown of all public buses and trams that were among the targets of the rioters. He also said he warns against using social networks as channels for incitement to violence.
The riots come just over a year before Paris and other French cities are expected to host Olympic athletes and millions of visitors to the Summer Olympics, whose organizers are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the competition continue.
Thirteen people who flouted traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. That year, three other people, including Nahel, died in similar circumstances. The deaths have sparked calls for more accountability in France, which has also seen racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
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Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press Writers Jade le Deley in Clichy-sous-Bois, France; Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon; Jocelyn Noveck in New York and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.