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France protests ease as Macron prepares to meet
leaders of parliament
Police made just 49 arrests on Sunday, down from more
than 2,000 over the previous two days, after appeal for calm from grandmother
of killed teenager
Staff and
agencies
Mon 3 Jul
2023 05.19 BST
President
Emmanuel Macron is set to meet the leaders of both houses of parliament on
Monday as violent protests over the police shooting of teenager Nahel M
appeared to ease after five nights of unrest that have seen thousands arrested
and widespread destruction.
Police made
49 arrests nationwide on Sunday, French media reported, citing the interior
ministry, down significantly from 719 arrests the day before, and 1,300 on
Friday.
Macron will
also meet on Tuesday with the mayors of 220 towns and cities affected by the
protests, Macron’s office said, after a crisis meeting on Sunday night with
government ministers.
The ebbing
violence follows an appeal for calm from the grandmother of Nahel, the 17-year-old
killed on Tuesday during a police traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
“Stop
rioting, stop destroying,” the grandmother, named as Nadia, told BFMTV. “I say
this to those who are rioting: do not smash windows, attack schools and buses.
Stop. It’s mothers who take those buses.” The rioters, mostly minors, were
“using Nahel as an excuse”, she said. “We want things to calm down.” Her
grandson, identified by only his first name, was buried on Saturday.
On Sunday,
politicians condemned an attack on Saturday night in which rioters rammed a
burning car into the home of Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses,
nine miles (15km) south of Paris, at about 1.30am while his family were asleep.
Jeanbrun was at the town hall at the time, but his wife and one of his two
children, aged five and seven, were injured as they fled. Jeanbrun’s wife
suffered a broken leg.
“Last night
was a new milestone in horror and disgrace,” the mayor, from the conservative
Les Républicains party, tweeted, condemning “an act of unspeakable cowardice”.
Regional
prosecutor Stephane Hardouin opened an attempted murder investigation on
Sunday, telling French television that a preliminary investigation suggested
the car was meant to ram the house and set it ablaze. “First indications
suggest the car was driven into the building in order to set fire to it,”
Stéphane Hardouin said, adding that a Coca-Cola bottle filled with flammable
liquid had also been found at the scene.
Visiting
L’Haÿ-les-Roses on Sunday, Elisabeth Borne, the prime minister, denounced “an
intolerable attack” and pledged those responsible would not get away with it.
While the situation was much calmer overall, the attack was particularly
shocking, she said.
Rioters
also entered the garden of another mayor, in La Riche, outside the city of
Tours, and tried to set light to his car, prosecutors said. Politicians of all
parties expressed outrage at the attacks, with demonstrations of support
planned outside town halls across France on Monday.
By Monday
morning, a GoFundMe page to support the police officer charged over the killing
of Nahel had attracted more than €800,000 (£690,000) in donations. The office
was “doing his job and was now paying a high price for it”, the page read.
More than
3,000 people have been detained since Tuesday, after the mass deployment of
45,000 police officers around the country. Over the weekend, Gérald Darmanin,
the interior minister, said the deployment would be unchanged, after protesters
torched cars, looted shops, damaged infrastructure and clashed with police on
Saturday night.
The Paris
police chief said it was too early to say the unrest had been quashed. “There
was evidently less damage, but we will remain mobilised in the coming days. We
are very focused; nobody is claiming victory,” Laurent Nunez said.
The
organisers of the Tour de France cycling race, which started in Bilbao on
Saturday, are monitoring the situation. The event will cross into France on
Monday.
With
Associated Press
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