“Accumulation”, “pissed off” and “frustration”. The death of Nahel, killed at the age of 17 by a policeman, was the “spark” which rekindled the anger of young people and “deeper problems”, according to the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods.
In Nanterre, in the streets of the Pablo-Picasso city where the teenager was from, the nights of riots left behind charred carcasses, melted garbage cans and countless tags demanding “Justice for Nahel”.
“There is a fed up, an accumulation, an air of déjà vu. Of course I understand that, I too grew up here. Afterwards, burning schools and shops is nonsense because it harms us all, ”said Mohamed, 39.
Sitting on a bench in a park whose trees border the towers of the city, he says he came down from his house several nights in a row to “reason with the little ones”.
Next to him, his friend Sofiane, 38, sighs, pointing with his arm to the ash gray skeleton of a merry-go-round that went up in smoke on Thursday evening.
“The damage, we do not tolerate. Basically, what we no longer want is untimely (police) checks. We want them to check us as if we were called Michel, ”he says, “distressed” by the death of a “kid” during a traffic check.
“Listening to young people”
Living in one of the towers behind the park, Fatiha Abdouni, 52, also came down from her pale blue building on Saturday evening to meet with neighborhood mediators as a restless night loomed.
“I don’t endorse breaking, burning, who endorses it? Now we have to listen to the young people, the frustration and the anger, which have to do with the difficulties of everyday life, with the inequalities of access to studies, to work, to housing, “says the co-founder of the association La voix des femmes. by Pablo Picasso.
For her, it is obvious, the death of Nahel was a “spark” reviving “deeper problems”.
Since Tuesday, the riots were led by “very young people”, circulating in small groups and relaying their actions on social networks: on the night of Thursday to Friday, the arrested were 17 years old on average, according to the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin.
On Saturday, the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, felt that it was necessary “to tell the parents again that they hold their kids”.
“It is not by pointing out the parents as if they were irresponsible that we will make things move forward”, replies Mohamed Mechmache, coordinator of an association created in Clichy-sous-Bois the day after the riots of 2005 which left this town in the suburbs of Paris, after the death of two teenagers who were fleeing the police.
“It is time to speak publicly to this youth, to tell them that they are part of this Republic,” the educator told AFP.
“Always the same ones who are targeted”
“The most important thing is to give hope to our children, that they believe in their future. I am afraid that there is a new death, ”abounds Fatima Ouassak, political scientist co-founder of the Front de mères collective, a union of parents of students from working-class neighborhoods.
In Pablo-Picasso, none of the young people crossed Sunday by AFP wished to speak.
During the white march in tribute to Nahel on Thursday, a 16-year-old teenager said: “It is always the same people who are targeted, blacks and Arabs, working-class neighborhoods. We kill a 17-year-old like that, for nothing: this death makes us hate”.
After five nights of riots, Nahel’s grandmother appealed for calm on Sunday: “Let them not break the windows, let them not break the schools, not the buses”.
Mohamed and Sofiane, who are delighted with the relative return to calm, now hope that “justice will be done”. “This policeman is a human being, he has to be a litigant like you and me. No two-tier justice. »