French President Emmanuel Macron remained “very cautious” about the return to calm after seven consecutive nights of riots in France which caused considerable damage, but he estimated that “the peak” had passed, receiving the presidency the mayors of the most affected cities.
“Is the return to calm sustainable? I will be careful, but the peak we have experienced in recent days has passed, ”said the head of state, according to a participant.
“It is the lasting, republican order that we all want, that we are going to tackle. This is the absolute priority”, he added, while thanking the elected officials and “with the same solemnity” all the police officers, gendarmes, municipal police officers and firefighters.
A week after the death of a young man killed by a policeman near Paris during a roadside check, the night was marked by fewer arrests, only 72, including 24 in Paris and its inner suburbs, compared to several hundreds at the height of the violence.
New destruction has nevertheless taken place and police or gendarmerie premises have been attacked and on Tuesday evening, buses and trams in the Paris region will stop again at 10 p.m.
This schedule, intended to preserve the safety of agents and passengers, is nevertheless shifted by one hour compared to the previous days.
According to figures sent to AFP on Tuesday by the French Ministry of the Interior, 3,486 people were arrested, 12,202 vehicles burned, 1,105 buildings burned or damaged and 209 premises of the national police, the gendarmerie or the municipal police attacked. since the night of June 27 to 28.
“Understanding Deeply”
In particular, around sixty schools suffered significant damage.
And “more than 1,000 businesses were either vandalized, attacked or burned down,” Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday, traveling to Essonne near Paris, announcing help “on a case-by-case basis.” cases” for “the most affected”, in addition to the support promised by the insurers.
While the long summer holidays have begun for a large part of French youth, the government has been maintaining massive means of policing for a week.
Nearly 45,000 police and gendarmes were mobilized Monday evening for the third consecutive night to try to stem the violence, which reached a climax on Sunday with the car-ramming attack on the home of an elected official in the southern suburbs. of Paris, the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, Vincent Jeanbrun, whose family had to flee.
By consulting the mayors, President Macron wants to “begin meticulous and longer-term work to understand in depth the reasons which led to these events”, specified his services.
As in 2005, the rioters express a “hatred” of the police with a violence now “trivialized” and the reinforced feeling of being rejected, in particular for young people of foreign origin and of Muslim faith, underlines the French sociologist Olivier Galland, researcher with the major French scientific organization CNRS.
For his colleague, Denis Merklen, professor at the new Sorbonne University and specialist in Latin America, the rioters attack the symbols of the State because these are largely present in poor neighborhoods, unlike other regions of the world where the state has deserted.
Punish the parents
“Everyone repeats it, there is a huge problem with the relationship of the police with this type of population”, he says, “especially when it has been going on for 40 years”.
The violence erupted on June 27, after the death of Nahel M., a 17-year-old whose family is from the Maghreb. He was shot at close range by a police motorcyclist, following a refusal to comply in Nanterre. The scene was captured on amateur video.
On Sunday, her grandmother called for calm and to stop the breakage.
In the judicial field, the response to the looting and looting was quick: 374 people have been tried in immediate appearance since Friday, according to the Ministry of Justice.
President Emmanuel Macron and his government have also revived the idea, recurring on the right, of financially sanctioning parents.
“It would be necessary that at the first offense, we manage to financially and easily sanction the families, a kind of minimum tariff from the first bullshit”, slipped Monday evening the Head of State, during a visit to a barracks capital police.