Top News
Over 1,300 Arrested in Fourth Night of Rioting Across France
PARIS (AP) – Rioting raged in cities around France for a fourth night despite a huge police deployment and 1,311 arrests, with cars and buildings set ablaze and stores looted, as family and friends prepared Saturday to bury the 17-year-old whose killing by police unleashed the unrest.
France’s Interior Ministry announced the new figure for arrests around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell violence.
Despite an appeal to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on. About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.
The funeral ceremony for the teen, identified only as Nahel, who was killed by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday, began on Saturday. Family and friends were viewing the open coffin before it will be taken to a mosque for a ceremony and later burial in a town cemetery.
Protesters lift a metal barrier during protests in Nantes, western France on June 30, 2023, after the shooting of a teenage driver by French police in a Paris suburb on June 27. (Photo by Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP) (Photo by SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS/AFP via Getty Images)
As the number of arrests continued to mount, the government suggested the violence was beginning to lessen thanks to tougher security measures.
Still, the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far away, in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
‘War’: Left Outraged as French Police Unions Call For Order to be Restored Against ‘Savage Hordes’ https://t.co/YDuPpiqDyt
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 30, 2023
France’s national soccer team – including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted – pleaded for an end to the violence.
“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, the players said in a statement. “Violence resolves nothing. … There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself.”
They said it’s time for “mourning, dialogue and reconstruction” instead.
The slaying of Nahel stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects who struggle with poverty, unemployment and racial discrimination. The subsequent rioting is the worst France has seen in years and puts new pressure on Macron, who blamed social media for fueling violence.
Anger erupted in the Paris suburb after Nahel’s death there Tuesday and quickly spread nationwide.
Emergency personnel survey the scene of a burnt out building – which housed a pharmacy – in Montargis, some 100kms south of Paris on July 1, 2023, which was set alight overnight during continuing protests following the shooting of a teenage driver in the suburb of Nanterre on June 27. (Photo by Mathieu RABECHAULT / AFP) (Photo by MATHIEU RABECHAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
Early Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets. In the neighboring suburb Colombes, protesters overturned garbage bins and used them for makeshift barricades.
Looters during the evening broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said. Officers in Marseille arrested nearly 90 people as groups of protesters lit cars on fire and broke store windows to take what was inside.
Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of the roughly 30 arrests made were for theft, police said. Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorized protest drew more than 1,000 people earlier Friday evening.
In Friday’s night violence, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores ransacked.
Bystanders take images of a burnt out vehicle in the sixth arrondisement of Paris on July 1, 2023, after continued protests following the shooting of a teenage driver in the suburb of Nanterre on June 27. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP) (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images)
While the number of overnight arrests was the highest yet, there were fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than the previous night, according to the Interior Ministry. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin claimed the violence was of “much less intensity.”
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters.
Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry said that France needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence, too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.
Macron Partied With Elton John as France Burned, Say Critics https://t.co/2r8GTonLxD
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 30, 2023
In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.
Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from vacation.
Darmanin ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown Friday of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters’ targets. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.
“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation identifying people inciting violence.
“We will pursue every person who uses these social networks to commit violent acts,” he said.
Macron, too, zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched. Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organize unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.
France’s Macron Pleads with Social Media Giants for Help as Riots Engulf Country https://t.co/2rx76LKyrR
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 30, 2023
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the summer Olympic Games. Organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for Paris 2024 continue.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing, but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer, but not at the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said.
“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children´s lives,” she said. The family has roots in Algeria.
TOPSHOT – French anti riot police officers watch a truck burn in Nantes, western France on early July 1, 2023, four days after a 17-year-old man was killed by police in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris. (Photo by Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP) (Photo by SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. In the wake of Nahel’s killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.
Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
This week’s protests echoed the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois
French Cities Burn, But Low-Immigration Poland is Peaceful, Says PM Morawiecki at EU Summithttps://t.co/tuNfdM4OtY
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 1, 2023
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London
Read the full article here
‘Googlers against genocide’ lead sit-ins, protests coast-to-coast at tech giant’s offices
Will Trump’s Criminal Trials Matter in November?
Stephen A. Smith: ‘Get Trump’ Lawfare Is Proof Democrats ‘Scared’ & ‘Can’t Beat Him On The Issues’
REALLY? Singer John Legend Claims Trump is ‘Benefiting’ From Two-Tiered Justice System (VIDEO)
Two Juveniles Accused of Vandalizing Catholic Church in Kentucky
Greg Kelly: Joe Biden isn’t a man of ‘excellence’ or ‘skill’
Ted Nugent: ATF ‘has lost its soul’
Carl Higbie: There is ‘no open mind’ at NPR anymore
I would support FISA reform, constraints on FBI: Harriet Hageman | The Chris Salcedo Show
