The multicultural Parisian suburb of Nanterre was the site of overnight clashes between youths and police following the shooting of a 17-year-old Arab teen by police in a traffic stop gone wrong.
The teenager, simply known as “Nael M,” was shot dead after failing to comply with an order to stop his vehicle Tuesday, June 27th, as footage of the incident shows one officer opening fire on the car as it attempts to drive away. The violence adds fuel to the flames of the French Republic’s simmering racial tensions that some critics say risk further destabilising the entire country.
The teenager, who was pronounced dead at the scene, first came to the attention of officers after committing multiple traffic violations. Officers claim that two police motorcyclists had been rammed by the car prior to the altercation. The officer who fired the fatal shots has already been detained on murder charges according to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office.
Nanterre locals gathered outside the nearby police station shortly after the shooting in protest as groups of youths began burning cars and attacking police cars with fireworks. Authorities responded by using dispersion grenades as street clashes ran throughout the night in running battles between police and young men largely from minority communities.
A total of twenty individuals had been arrested when an air of calm returned to the usually quiet Parisian suburb Wednesday morning. President Macron immediately condemned the violence while on a visit to Marseilles and said that the death of the young man “moved the entire nation.”
Macron’s response was rubbished by Reconquête leader and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour as an act of political cowardice by failing to defend a French police officer and siding with the rioters.
The French National Assembly held a minute’s silence in memory of the deceased teen Wednesday.
The death of members of ethnic minority communities at the hands of police is a major flashpoint in French racial politics and has often provoked riots before. In 2016, Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man, died in police custody in Beaumont-sur-Oise sparking weeks of violent protests.
French suburbs or banlieues already have a notorious reputation for being high-crime areas as pundits say that entire communities exist outside the control of the state. The issue of crime and multiculturalism has been a leading theme in recent French elections as former French military officers warned in an open letter in 2021 that the country was facing a potential civil-war scenario caused by multicultural breakdown.
The shooting and subsequent violence have spurred calls for structural changes within French policing from leftist groups led by former La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon who lambasted police as institutionally racist.
