Mon dieu, the riots! It’s carbeque time in Paris again

Paris is rapidly developing into a warzone as violent protests continue to blossom over the police shooting of 17 year old teenager on Tuesday

6:15pm: Paris suburb imposes overnight curfew until Monday
A Paris suburb of 54,000 people has been put on curfew through the weekend, in response to rioting triggered by the deadly police shooting of a local teenager.

Clamart, in the French capital’s southwest suburbs, announced the extraordinary measure on Thursday in a statement on its website.

It said the overnight curfew would start at 9pm and last until 6am – from Thursday night through to Monday.

It cited “the risk of new public order disturbances” for the decision, after two nights of urban unrest. “Clamart is a safe and calm town, we are determined that it stay that way,” the local government said in a statement.

Paris is burning pic.twitter.com/jXdvTncXWE

— Right Side of History™️ (@xxclusionary) June 29, 2023

It really is a God awful case that sparked all of this, and the whole truly disturbing incident was caught on video. The video sure seems to indicate police lied about what went down.

The 17-year-old driver, identified only as Nahel M., was pulled over by two policemen on Tuesday for breaking traffic rules, prosecutors said.

Police initially reported that one officer shot at the teenager because he was driving his car at him, but this version of events was contradicted by a video circulating on social media and authenticated by AFP.

The footage shows the two policemen standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver. A voice is heard saying: “You are going to get a bullet in the head.”

The police officer appears to fire at the driver at point-blank range as the car abruptly drives off, advancing a few dozen metres before crashing.

The driver died shortly thereafter.

The driver was a young guy of North African extraction who was known to area police, and had been stopped numerous time before.

…The 17-year-old who died on Tuesday has been identified only as Nahel. His mother is Algerian and father Moroccan, according to an acquaintance of the family. He was known to police for previous incidents in which he failed to comply with traffic stops, the local prosecutor Pascal Prache said.

Understandably, people were incensed, as they had every right to be. But, thanks to the resentment already between the community and French police, plus the video evidence contradicting police testimony, immediately there were fires set, both in trash bins, at a music school, plus 40 cars were torched, and online rhetoric was fanning the flames.

Took off like a wildfire.

…Green Party officials also spoke out, denouncing the “Americanisation” of French police tactics.

“What I see in this video is a 17-year-old kid being executed, in France in 2023, by a police officer on a public highway,” said the Greens’ Marine Tondelier. “It seems like we are heading towards an Americanisation of the police,” she warned, adding: refusal to comply with police orders is normally “three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, not a bullet in the head”.

Damn.

‘All throughout the Parisian suburbs there were chaotic scenes last night, and cars burnt this morning… The type of riots from the suburbs we haven’t seen since 2005.’

Régis Le Sommier reports from Paris following the unrest sparked by the shooting of a teenager by the police pic.twitter.com/FKS72v8Fcc

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 29, 2023

American racial experts are weighing in with helpful social commentary…

Nahel ‘execution’ reflects ruthless form of ‘French racism’ engulfed in ‘denial, hubris & arrogance’

A vigil march for Nahel M., the 17-year-old shot by the police in France this week, arrived at the court building in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the shooting took place.

Nahel’s mother held up a firecracker in a sea of people chanting her son’s name.https://t.co/qIQaLMeOC2 pic.twitter.com/aayHskq0xF

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

…even as President Macron rustles up 40,000 French cops to deploy across the country as the violence spreads.

…”Vengeance for Nahel,” was scrawled across buildings and bus shelters, referring to the youngster.

Earlier, Macron held a crisis meeting with senior ministers over the shooting. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne afterwards dismissed calls from some political opponents for a state of emergency to be declared.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 40,000 police officers would be deployed across the country – nearly four times the numbers mobilised on Wednesday – including 5,000 in the Paris region in a bid to quell the unrest.

“The response of the state must be extremely firm,” Darmanin said, speaking from the northern town of Mons-en-Baroeul where several municipal buildings were set alight.

The incident has fed longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies from rights groups and within the low-income, racially mixed suburbs that ring major cities in France.

The teen’s mother aside, it’s not just firecrackers the “protestors” are deploying against, so far, overmatched Parisian police.

People with guns and grenades; protests and riots all over France; and the beautiful city of Paris is burning.

The suicide of Europe continues.

The only consolation is that countries of the Global South are not adding fuel to this fire. Imagine if Syria, Iran, Russia, China,… pic.twitter.com/J5gcxQhuSZ

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) June 29, 2023

The French police officer who pulled the trigger is being being held for “voluntary manslaughter’ charges, but that will have little effect on the rioting in the streets

…The 38-year-old policeman seen firing the lethal shot was taken into custody and is now under investigation for voluntary manslaughter.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday the shooting was “inexplicable” and “unforgivable”.

“Nothing can justify the death of a young person,” said Macron on the third day of a visit to Marseille.

Macron said the incident had “moved the entire nation”.

Nahel M.’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, said he would file a legal complaint against the policeman for voluntary manslaughter and against his colleague for complicity in the shooting.

Bouzrou also said he would file a complaint against the policemen for giving false testimony for claiming that Nahel M. had tried to run them over.

No one cares that Macron’s administration is supporting the teen’s family. They seem to want a prolonged, rampaging street war, with both the cautionary and incendiary voices in the background signaling they are primed for one.

…The strenuous efforts of President Emmanuel Macron and his government to stand with Nahel and his family seem – so far – to be falling on deaf ears.

Anger at the police has grown here since their powers were increased after a wave of terrorist attacks in 2015.

And in Pablo Picasso on Thursday morning, as daily life resumed among the burnt-out cars, residents spoke of little else.

Behind the scenes of children playing on their scooters, and café terraces serving morning coffee, there’s anxiety about what might be coming.

“The youth are angry,” said 32-year-old Charlene, who has lived in Nanterre for over a decade. “Things are not going to calm down yet. I think it’ll last for another 10 days at least.“

Ah, the suburbs.

…The unspoken fear of many here: that the tragedy of a teenager’s death could ignite a long cold war between French suburbs and French state.

What to do. Paris is battening down the hatches tonight, closing bus and tram services at 9 p.m. and across the country, the cities of Tours and Lille are following suit at 10 p.m.

It is not just transport in Paris which is being disrupted this evening, we are also seeing services being halted earlier in Lille – in the north-east of France.

The ilevia Metro firm, which runs public transport in Lille, says from 20:00 local time there will be no buses or trams running.

Down in Tours, around 240km south-west of Paris, again trams and bus services will stop at 22:00 local time.

There are bets how long and how bad it has to get for Macron to call out the military. The memories of the 3 week long, 2005 conflagration – caused by another circumstance of teenage deaths with police involvement – are still fresh and foreboding to those watching the situation evolve overnight.

A teenage boy is shot dead by a policeman; the policeman then lies about what happened; cars and buildings are set ablaze in the boy’s neighbourhood; copy-cat violence spreads though other multi-racial suburbs as far away as Bordeaux and Marseille.

In 2005 the riots continued for three weeks, reaching almost every large or middle-sized town in France. There are reasons to fear that the same will happen again.

…But there are also reasons to hope that the spiral of riots will be less prolonged this time. In 2005, the government, and especially its interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, persisted for weeks in lying about the circumstances in which police chased two innocent boys to their deaths in an electricity sub-station.

On this occasion, the government – confronted with a damning video clip of events circulating on social media – has admitted that there is evidence that a motorcycle cop shot Nahel M at point-blank range without justification. The policeman has been arrested.

There was an immediate confirmation of the evidence from the Macron government, immediate action regarding the accused police officer, and seemingly all the appropriate gestures and transparencies have been employed.

But the mob can only be placated if it wants to. And how much of their violence has little to do with a death, and more to do with waiting for an excuse for action?

What are French citizens to make of this and how will it help the tensions between these predominantly immigrant communities and them?

Macron is literally going to be on the hotseat in the next few days attempting to project strength and compassion, all while wrestling this back from the brink of exploding into a runaway summer inferno.