Car catches fire during protest in Nanterre, greater Paris, where a teenager was killed by police last week | Photo: EFE/EPA/MOHAMMED BADRA
Last Tuesday (27), a 17yearold French driver was shot dead by a police officer after a chase. The young man worked as a delivery man and driver for an app and his name was Nahel Merzouk. The initial police report of the death was contradicted by a video posted on the internet, which served as a catalyst for violent protests that lasted for days and sparked various discussions about French society, including the everpresent issue of immigration.
Regarding the episode surrounding Nahel Merzouk’s death, 38yearold police officer Florian Messiha will face charges of murder. The incident began when two police officers on motorcycles noticed the car driven by Merzouk with Polish license plates, which was driving at high speed, crossing a special bus lane and going through a red light. After warning signs, the police intercepted the car in traffic and asked the driver to park the car with aimed firearms.
The first version of the police said that the driver tried to run over the officers, after which one of them shot him. However, video was released showing the car moving but not toward the officers, who never faced any danger from the vehicle. One of the passengers also stated on the app that Merzouk was hit with the other police officer’s butt, which released the car’s brakes. Police officer Messiha provided first aid to the driver who died.
The police officer’s defense changed their version, stating that he had not intended to hit the driver in the chest, only to incapacitate him and prevent pedestrians from being endangered. According to the French press, three investigations were opened: “refusal to comply with a decision made by a person in authority”, “attempted murder of a person in authority” and “murder by a person in authority”. Authority”. There were also attempts to blame Merzouk for the incident.
He is said to have had previous incidents with the authorities, although he has no criminal record. It is also noted that due to his age, he would not be able to drive a vehicle professionally with only a provisional license. In any case, it is important to emphasize that the incident is under investigation and that no previous episode could justify the incident. Driving without proper documentation, for example, is not a felony and would certainly cost many lives if it were.
protests and deaths
The death sparked a series of protests and riots that began in Nanterre, in the greater Paris area, the driver’s hometown. The protests spread across France, including in major cities such as Toulouse and Marseille, as well as in overseas territories. About 40,000 police officers were deployed, hundreds of people were injured, more than 3,000 people were arrested and at least two people died. The powerful scenes of violence and destruction ran through the social networks.
Scenes with burning cars, common in France, increased, also with the destruction of public and private property. One of those killed was Dorian Damelincourt, a 24yearold firefighter while fighting a blaze in SaintDenis, a suburb of the French capital. Another fatality was that of a 50yearold man who was standing by the window of his home in suburban Cayenne, French Guiana, and was hit by a “stray bullet” from a firearm.
One of the most unfortunate episodes concerned Marseille’s main public library, the Alcazar, housed in a 19thcentury building and now covering more than 18 square kilometers and containing almost a million works and documents in its collection. Part of the building was set on fire and an assessment of the potential damage to the collection has not yet been released. Another episode was the arson attack on the mayor’s residence of L’HaylesRoses, in the greater Paris area, which is being investigated as attempted murder.
What explains the size of the protests and their extent? As I said, the death of driver Nahel Merzouk was the trigger, but certainly not the only cause. As a trigger, death symbolizes and catalyzes a number of other problems in French society. First, the fact that a section of French society is dissatisfied with some aspects of its policing model and accuses the legal forces of abuse of power and violence, an allegation that is not new.
For example, at the beginning of the year, during protests against the pension reform, police units were investigated for alleged abuse of violence. In November 2020, music producer Michel Zecler was attacked by police officers and subjected to racial abuse when he was arrested for not wearing a mask during the pandemic. In 2019, during the socalled yellow vest protests, television footage of police operations led to an order for police officers to use body cameras.
The number of people who lost their sight as a result of the use of rubber bullets by the police on this occasion was particularly striking. Race in France is certainly a factor we’ll get to later, but in 2019 the Yellow Vests protests were mostly white French. This means that the dissatisfaction with police violence extends over several episodes with different characteristics and over several years.
Of course, even in relative numbers, police violence in France is much lower than in countries like the US or Brazil and is also a very sensitive issue in French society today. The second aspect is overall socioeconomic dissatisfaction, especially among younger people. Most of the participants in the protests are young, many of them minors, so President Emmanuel Macron has called on parents to keep their children at home.
Generational, not a migration issue
The average age of those arrested is 17 years. An example of this “antisystem” youth discontent is the fact that many of the targets of attacks and fires are public buildings such as schools, administrative buildings and police stations. Most of the detainees live in poor neighborhoods and outlying areas, hardest hit by the recent crises in France and the impact of the Covid19 pandemic. Poor, helpless young people who feel they are being targeted by the police and have “nothing to lose”.
The country’s most important football player today, Kylian Mbappé, published a note on his social networks which said: “Since this tragic event, we have witnessed the expression of popular anger that, deep down, we understand but cannot accept .” Mbappé was born in Paris, is a French citizen and the son of a Cameroonian father and an Algerian Berber mother, both countries that were part of the French colonial empire. In a way, the football star symbolizes the third aspect of the protests.
Many of the demonstrators are poor young people from these communities, such as Algerians, Cameroonians or Senegalese. They feel like a preferred target for the police. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on the French government to address “the pervasive problems of racism and discrimination in policing,” a claim denied by the Macron government. Merzouk’s grieving mother said the officer “saw an Arab face, a little boy, and wanted to take his life.”
With the protests, antiimmigrant rhetoric and political movements are growing in France. However, this is superficial. The reader may have noticed that we have not used the term immigrant before. Merzouk and Mbappé are French citizens, along with millions of other young French people. They are not immigrants, they are not newcomers. People born in former French colonies before independence are French citizens, as are their children if they were born in France.
For example, Smaïl Zidane, a Berber, was born in Algeria in 1935 when the territory was still part of France. He is a French citizen. Their son Zidane was born in Marseille in 1972, after Algeria gained independence, and is also a French citizen, as is their son Enzo, who was born in Bordeaux in 1995. If an immigrant or foreign national is arrested for a crime like burning at a police station, they can simply be deported. What to do when it comes to a French citizen?
The antiimmigrant discourse ultimately turns populist as it seeks a simple solution to an extremely complex problem: the profound racial and socioeconomic divisions of contemporary French society, the result of its colonial empire, and the lack of adequate political action. In addition to hypocrisy for convenience, believing that any of these individuals is not “genuinely French” would also be an illegal act. And the proposal to strip someone of their citizenship because of their skin color, for example, has a name. Racism.
To use a very Brazilian expression, the ‘hole’ of the French problem is ‘much deeper’ than a mere migration problem. This is a structural problem that requires profound solutions. Not only was French politics divided, but it also suffered an external setback when Macron canceled a state visit to Germany, the first since 2000, all in the year leading up to the Paris Olympics, with France’s image at risk.