France has experienced the first day of relative truce after six nights of strong riots and violence throughout the country that have already left 3,400 detainees, thousands of cars set on fire and hundreds of buildings and businesses attacked. If there were 1,300 detainees on Friday, on Sunday night it barely exceeded 150. The Government does not want to claim victory, but is confident that its plan (appeasement messages and police deployment) to deal with this wave of violence will work and return the calm the country
The fuse was lit almost a week ago, after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old boy, by a shot by a police officer in Nanterre, a neighborhood on the Parisian outskirts. The days that have followed this event have been a roller coaster: first the neighborhoods revolted, in response to the death of the young man, and then the riots began in the rest of the country, including the centers of large cities.
Shops have been looted, cars, trams and buses set on fire. Violence has crossed red lines: One day a bank branch was set on fire in a building with people on the upper floors. On Sunday morning, several individuals rammed a burning car into the house of the mayor of L’Haÿ-Les-Roses, south of Paris. Inside, his wife and his two children were sleeping.
They are just a few examples. It is almost miraculous, as government sources recall, that in these days there have been no victims on either side: neither by the rioters, nor by the forces of order. “The most tragic thing would have been another drama during the interventions. This has not happened despite the extreme violence that we have seen,” these sources say.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, the Government, the opposition parties, the soccer player Kylian Mbappé, the French team and the grandmother of the deceased young man have called for the violence to stop. “It is your mothers who go to the shops that you are destroying, we no longer have cars, we no longer have anything,” said Nahel’s grandmother on Sunday.
Government sources clarify that this has not been (or is not being) “a revolt of the neighborhoods” in France. “Its inhabitants are enraged by what has happened. They get up in the morning with their cars burned and their shops destroyed. They are the first victims of what is happening,” they say.
This crisis reveals multiple cracks in the seams of France: the discontent in these shantytowns, multicultural areas where the integration system has failed. Forgotten and populated by French children and grandchildren of immigrants who feel like second class citizens; the latent violence in a country that always seems about to explode; the relationship of mistrust of a large part of the citizenry with the forces of order, as seen during the recent demonstrations against Macron’s pension reform; the rejection of some of the institutions and symbols of the Republic. That is why they burn schools, police stations, city halls and municipal libraries.
France has lived for days almost in a militarized state: with 45,000 agents and gendarmes on the streets for three consecutive days, an unprecedented number. Not as much cash was mobilized even during the wave of violence in 2005, following the death of two young men who were electrocuted while fleeing from the police. It lasted three weeks and left thousands of detainees, three deaths and numerous fires and damage.
So the largest deployment was 11,000 agents. This time it has been three times greater. Armored personnel have been seen on the streets and the elite forces that are called upon when there is a hostage taking or a terrorist attack have been detached. “The police response has been gradual, contained and measured,” say government sources.
The Government did not want to declare a state of emergency, as requested by some parties, including Los Republicanos, a conservative formation on which the government majority relies, which does not have a majority in the Assembly, in order to carry out its reforms. He has opted for exceptional measures (some curfews and suspension of transport at night), police deployment and messages of empathy. An attempt has been made not to “create a fracture among the French”, but to “appeal to the union of the Republic”.
So far the story of chaos of the last six days. Nahel was fired on Saturday in Nanterre and the policeman who shot him has been in pretrial detention since last Thursday. In the car in which Nahel was traveling there was another occupant, who has been on the run until yesterday he gave his version to the Police. Life in Nanterre tries to return to normal amid all the destruction.
Macron meets this afternoon with the presidents of the Senate and the Assembly. Tomorrow he does it with 220 mayors of the country, very concerned about the attacks they are suffering, not only now. This morning rallies have been held in all the country’s mayors’ offices in support. The one from L’Haÿ Les Roses, whose house was attacked on Sunday, participated in a march in which he warned: “These are attacks on the Republic. We will continue standing and we will resist.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project