France: Rebellion of the masses after a new murder committed by the police

Fires and police deployment in Nanterre. Source: Le Monde

The police detained and murdered a young man, Nahel M., in a traffic control on Tuesday 27^th of June in the proletarian suburb Nanterre, Paris. The French police shot at him and said that this happened in self-defense, because Nahel allegedly tried to run over them with his car. But quickly it was discovered that this was a lie, and that the police murdered Nahel in cold blood. Nanterre is an area with a lot of proletarian immigrants. After this murder, in the last days there have been a lot of riots and barricades in flames in many French cities, for example in Paris, Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, Lyon, etc. Today morning, the Minister of Interior, Darmanin, gave the official numbers of detained and injured: 180 detained people after the riots of yesterday, and also 170 injured police officers.

In 2022, 13 people were killed in police controls on the roads of the French State. The vast majority of them were black or from the Magreb, and from proletarian suburbs. In the last years the police violence has grown tremendously in France: 2021 had the highest number of murders by French police, in total 51; in 2022 there were 39 murders. Even if there were more murders in 2021, actually in 2022 the murders had almost tripled by shots of police against disarmed people, going from five to 13.

Once more the great repression from French State is turning against itself, and now the people are revolting against police violence. In just two days there has been a big rebellion through the whole country. A large police deployment has been announced in France: until 40.000 police officers in the whole State, and 5.000 of them to the metropolitan area of Paris. In the latter city there are a huge amount of riots, barricades and attacks from the people against the police with fireworks, flares, etc. There are reports of multiple actions in many Parisian suburbs, with burning of cars and buses, and spontaneous demonstrations.

Today a demonstration was called in Nanterre, and has gathered thousands of people. French police characterized one thousand of the protesters as “troublemakers” and has done police charges against the demonstration, used tear gasses, etc. Many protesters have resisted the attacks from police and have prepared barricades.

In other cities as Toulouse, Nantes or Lille, French people also have mobilized. In Toulouse there have been riots, a big fire with consequences for many vehicles, and also there have been many anti-riot police charges against the protesters.

In Nantes there has been a demonstration of several hundreds of people and a rally in front of a police station.

In Lille there has been a demonstration with 300 people, and the police charged several times against them, using tear gas in order to dissolve the mobilization.

There have been new attacks against the police in the past days and today, in Lyon.