France protests: nearly 500 arrested as riots surge in Marseille and Lyon

 

France protests: nearly 500 arrested as riots surge in Marseille and Lyon

 

Fourth night of demonstrations sees 45,000 police deployed as authorities claim the situation is calmer

 

Jonathan Yerushalmy and agencies

Sat 1 Jul 2023 05.30 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/01/france-riots-nearly-500-arrested-as-protests-surge-in-marseille-and-lyon

 

More than 470 people in France were arrested during a fourth night of unrest triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager, but officials claimed that the situation was calmer than on the previous night.

 

Forty-five thousand police officers, including special forces, were deployed to respond to rioting and looting across the country on Friday night. Reports indicated that conditions in Paris were slightly calmer than on previous nights, while the situation in other major cities like Marseille and Lyon was more chaotic, with buildings and vehicles torched and stores looted.

 

Shops in several malls in Paris suburbs, as well as an Apple store in the centre of Strasbourg, were looted on Friday afternoon.

 

“It’s the republic that will win, not the rioters,” France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said as he met with police in the early hours of Saturday morning. “We are at 471 arrests on national territory,” he said, but noted “a much lower intensity than during the day yesterday and even the day before yesterday”.

 

More than 900 people were arrested on the previous night.

 

Darmanin denounced the “unacceptable violence in Lyon and Marseille” where public demonstrations were banned and public transport halted.

 

More than 80 arrests were made in Marseille, according to the interior ministry, and “significant reinforcements” were sent after the mayor, Benoit Payan, called on the national government to immediately send additional troops.

 

“The scenes of pillaging and violence are unacceptable,” Payan tweeted late on Friday, after police clashed with protesters.

 

Local media reported that an Aldi was the target of a looting ram-raid, while authorities said they were investigating the cause of an apparent explosion in the city, which they did not believe caused any casualties.

 

Several rifles were looted from a gun store, but no ammunition was taken. One person was arrested with a rifle that was probably from the store, police said.

 

In Lyon and its surrounding suburbs, rioters set cars ablaze and aimed fireworks at police. Police deployed armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter to quell the unrest in France’s third-largest city.

 

Local media reported a quieter night in Paris, where “a massive deployment of law enforcement forces deterred the slightest hint of confrontation or disruption”, the Le Monde newspaper said.

 

Despite this, there were still 120 arrests in the capital, with reports of burnt garbage and violent scuffles in the Les Halles district.

 

The unrest flared nationwide after Nahel M, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot by police on Tuesday during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb. His death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints of police violence and racism.

 

The 38-year-old officer involved in the shooting, who has said he fired the shot because he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, has been charged with voluntary homicide and placed in provisional detention.

 

Nahel is due to be buried in a ceremony on Saturday, according to the mayor of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where he lived and was killed. The family’s lawyers have asked journalists to stay away, saying it was “a day of reflection” for Nahel’s relatives.

 

Mayor Patrick Jarry said: “There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency [of the situation].”

 

Speaking in Mantes-la-Jolie, Darmanin highlighted the young age of many of those taking part in demonstrations.

 

“I do not confuse the few hundred, the few thousand delinquents, often very young unfortunately, with the vast majority of our compatriots who live in working-class neighbourhoods, who want to work and educate their children,” he said.

 

The French football team urged an end to the violence on Friday night.

 

“The time of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” the team said in a statement posted on social media by their captain, Kylian Mbappé.

 

The team said they were “shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel” but asked that violence give way to “other peaceful and constructive ways of expressing oneself”.

 

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, left a European Union summit in Brussels early on Friday to attend a crisis meeting. He urged parents to keep their children at home and accused social media companies of playing a “considerable role”, saying violence was being organised online. He asked platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content.

 

Macron is under mounting pressure from rightwing parties to declare a state of emergency, which would give authorities extra powers to ban demonstrations and limit free movement.

 

Asked on Friday night whether the government could declare a state of emergency, Darmanin said: “We’re not ruling out any hypothesis and we’ll see after tonight what the president of the republic chooses.”

 

Darmanin said on Saturday he was cautious about such an order, which “has been called four times in 60 years”.

 

Analysts said the government was desperate to avoid a repeat of 2005, when a state of emergency was declared after the death of two boys of African origin in a police chase sparked three weeks of rioting.

 

Reuters contributed to this report