Look at their faces. Their hands. They talk. They gathered at Place de la Concorde, in Paris, on June 30, three days after the death of Nahel M., to pay tribute to him and protest against police violence. That’s why, arms open, hands in the air, they resume the gesture “Hands up, don’t shoot!” “, used by American protesters following the death, in 2014, of young Michael Brown, 18, shot six times by a police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. Nine years later, same fight, same gesture: “Hands up, don’t shoot!” »
Among these young demonstrators with their hands in the air, several are holding signs. On one of them is inscribed the following sentence: “90% of people killed by the police are non-white”. This claim is taken from a column published in 2014, shortly after the Ferguson riots, in Liberation by anti-racist activists Sihame Assbague and Rokhaya Diallo. “More than 90% are non-whites killed by white police,” even wrote these in their text, without citing official sources. And for good reason, ethnic statistics are prohibited in France.
So how do you establish that “the police are racist” as another sign does? Until France meets the recommendations of the European Union, which encourages ethnic statistics to assess discrimination, we must be content with a figure, a single one, tackling the subject head-on. Dated 2017, and published in a survey commissioned by then-rights advocate Jacques Toubon, the figure claims that young men “perceived as black or Arab” are “twenty times more likely than others to be checked by the police. “.
A third sign appears less frontal. “He who sows impunity reaps the wrath of a united people!” “, she proclaims. It is inspired by the slogan displayed by a Nice bookstore on its window, during a visit near Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, in December 2022. The window was then covered with a sheet blacked out by the police and the establishment closed for a whole day. His managers had filed a complaint. Ironically, only a few days ago the administrative court of Nice condemned the State for “undermining freedom of expression” in this case.
In this image, finally, a statue seems to watch over the crowd. In this case, this work, produced in 1702 by the so-called Antoine Coyaux for the drinking trough of Marly and moved in 1719 to the entrance to the Tuileries garden, is called La Renown riding Pegasus. She thus depicts Renown, a winged deity with many eyes and as many mouths, allowing her to learn secrets and divulge them, and armed with a trumpet. With their gestures and signs, the demonstrators want to do the same.
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