(Paris) More than 1,000 people gathered in Paris on Saturday afternoon, in memory of Adama Traoré and despite the ban from the police headquarters, while “citizen marches” marked by “mourning and anger” against the violence police are organized in several other cities in France.
Assa Traoré, Adama’s sister and figure in the fight against police violence, announced that she would be present “Saturday at 3 p.m. Place de la République”, after the ban on the planned march in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise , in Val-d’Oise, in memory of his brother who died shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes in July 2016.
She spoke standing on a bench in the square, in front of several elected officials from La France insoumise and surrounded by a large police force. “We march for young people, to denounce police violence. We want to hide our dead, ”she said, notably in front of the leader of the rebellious in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, the deputies Éric Coquerel and Louis Boyard, wearing their tricolor scarf, like Sandrine Rousseau (EELV) .
“We authorize the march of neo-Nazis but we are not authorized to march. France cannot give moral lessons. His police are racist, his police are violent, ”also said Assa Traoré.
PHOTO BERTRAND GUAY, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
activist Assa Traoré
Shortly after the police asked people to disperse and some jostling took place, while the demonstrators chanted “Justice for Nahel”, noted journalists on the spot, who saw people being fined.
The demonstrators then left in a procession, calmly, towards Boulevard Magenta.
PHOTO BERTRAND GUAY, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Demonstration on the Place de la République, in Paris
In an order posted online in the morning, the police headquarters justified the ban on this undeclared gathering as “presenting risks of disturbing public order”.
The decree, signed by the prefect of police Laurent Nuñez, recalls the “tense context” and the “five consecutive nights” of urban violence in the Paris region and in the capital, after the death of Nahel M., 17, killed by a policeman during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre.
“Firm for the police”
Thirty other demonstrations against police violence have been listed in France on an online map, in Marseille and from Nantes to Strasbourg. The planned rally in Lille has been banned.
In Saint-Nazaire, nearly 150 people demonstrated peacefully according to local media. In Strasbourg, they were around 400, according to an AFP journalist.
“That’s enough, gunshots, LBDs etc. We need local police,” said retired Geneviève Manka in Strasbourg. At the head of the procession, young people shouted slogans like “police everywhere, justice nowhere”. A sign called for “equality for all before the law” and demanded “firm for the police”.
Nearly a hundred associations, unions and political parties classified on the left, including LFI, EELV, CGT and Solidaires, called for these “citizen marches”, to express “mourning and anger” and denounce policies deemed “discriminatory against working-class neighborhoods.
These organizations call for “in-depth reform of the police, of their intervention techniques and of their armament”.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran on Friday criticized organizations whose “only proposal”, according to him, is “to call for demonstrations […] in the big cities that have not yet recovered from the looting”.
He particularly pointed to the responsibility of elected officials, including those of rebellious France, who had called to join the prohibited march in Beaumont-sur-Oise, accusing them of leaving “the republican arc”.
Nahel’s death and the urban violence that followed – unprecedented since 2005 – shed light on the ills of French society, from the difficulties of working-class neighborhoods to the stormy relations between young people and the police.
On Saturday, the Quai d’Orsay reacted strongly to criticism from a UN committee of experts who had heavily criticized the management of the riots by the police, calling in particular for the prohibition of “racial profiling”.
France “contests remarks which it considers excessive” and “unfounded”, replied the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressing in particular that “the fight against the excesses of so-called “facies” controls [s’était] intensified”.