Massive protests continue in France denouncing the killing of 17-year-old French Algerian teenager Nael M, who was shot to death by the police in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on the morning of Tuesday, June 27. A massive vigil march was held in Nanterre in memory of Nael on June 29 where his mother was also present.
Protests turned violent at several places including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Lille. According to reports, 40,000 security personnel were deployed in various cities across France to curb the protests. Around 667 protesters were arrested by Friday, according to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
On Tuesday morning, Nael M, a delivery driver, was riding a rented car when he was shot to death by the police at a traffic stop. Police had initially reported that the teenager had threatened to run over the officers, but a video circulating on social media contradicted this claim, showing that one of the two officers who stopped his car shot Nael point blank in the head.
Following this incident, spontaneous protests started across France denouncing the incident as a racially instigated extrajudicial killing. The protests forced French President Emmanuel Macron to leave early from an EU summit in Brussels on Friday and return to France to address the situation. The officer who shot Nael has been taken into custody for the charge of “voluntary homicide by a person in authority.”
Left-wing groups also participated in the protests demanding justice for Nael but appealed to the protesters to refrain from violence which the state might use to justify its repression.
According to L’Humanite, various groups have also demanded repeal of a 2017 law which ambiguously authorizes the police to shoot “when they cannot otherwise immobilize drivers who do not obey the order to stop and whose occupants are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, attacks on their life or on their physical integrity or on that of others.”
Assan Lakehoul, general secretary of the Young Communists Movement of France (MJCF), told Peoples Dispatch on June 30, “A policeman killed a 17-year-old boy for refusing to comply. The video of the scene is inexcusable. The police have no power of life or death over anyone. Judiciary must pronounce the fairest sentence against this policeman.”
On June 30, spokeswoman of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, asked the French government “to take seriously the deep issues of racism and discrimination within law enforcement.”
The French police have courted criticism earlier as well for extrajudicial killings of the same nature. On July 19, 2016, a Malian French man, Adama Traoré, was killed on his 24th birthday by three police officers from the French National Gendarmerie who used excessive force when arresting him at Beaumont-sur-Oise. The incident courted widespread protests. In 2019, police violence against the Black Vest protests organized by undocumented migrant workers in Paris was also widely condemned.
