Riots in France

There was an interesting piece in The Sunday Times yesterday by Nabila Ramdani about the history of the banlieues where she grew up and the conditions endured by Algerian migrants in particular. Whilst it has to be acknowledged that most European countries have at times been less than welcoming to their migrant populations, Britain being no exception to that. Given the passage of time since our own West Indian immigrants arrived to a sometimes hostile reception, a recent survey from immigrant populations in Britain, the overall consensus was that there has been a far better effort to assimilate them than some of our European counterparts. On reading this succinct point of view from, the journalist who grew up in one of the infamous banlieues around Paris, it was both shocking but easy to understand just how deep rooted the grievances are amongst the Algerian population. This piece gives a brief history of what unfolded in the context of a modern history to highlight the simmering unrest that lit the touch papers recently.

"The colonisation of Algeria started in 1830 when the French army supported European settler militias in quelling resistance from indigenous Arabs and Berbers. The French exterminated many of them - at one point using primitive gas chambers - and turned others into a reviled servant class

Thousands of Algerians were brought into mainland France from 1945 when cheap labour was needed to rebuild the shattered nation.

In 1954 Algerian nationalists began a war of Independence, which would last for eight years. It was marked by atrocities on both sides, including the use of napalm and carpet bombing by French forces on Algerian villages. Algerians living in France were stereotyped as potential insurgents for the liberation movement the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale) On October 17, 1961 thousands of itinerant Algerians travelled to the centre of the capital to peacefully call for an end to the Algerian war.

Some 300 were killed by policemen. The Algerians were shot, pushed into the Seine, and left to drown around tourist sites such as Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower

Nobody has been brought to justice, and it was not until the early 2000s that the authorities conceded state responsibility for the slaughter. Poignantly a road that leads to Nahel's estate is called Boulevard du 17 Octobre 1961.

In 1962 Algeria won its independence. Some 28,000 French soldiers and 6,000 settlers had been killed in the war. Algerians put their own death toll at around 1.5 million. For the three million Algerians who still live in places such as Nanterre, on the sink estates that grew out of the shanty towns all of this remains embedded in the collective memory.

I'm guessing you could see it as a preemptive type of policing, but what is worrying is the urge to intervene violently.

Katie59 The question is about the culture that says a policeman has a gun and is pointing it into the car when stopping a teenager in an urban area. We are not talking about a high speed chase with weapons involved.

89 in the Uk- not much better than France and not a number to be proud of. Australia isn’t much better,either.

Absolutely shocking halfpint1

There are over 100 wives murdered by their husbands in France every year. Rather a shocking statistic looked at in
the light of the riots over this death.

Jaxjacky

France has banned the purchase, possession and transport of all fireworks this week prior to Bastille Day to prevent them being misused.

I'm not sure that will help enormously, but it's a start at getting tough. The Nice terror attack on July 14th was at an organised event, most of the rioters in Paris, Marseille etc use petrol bombs. Sadly people will always find ways round it.

France has banned the purchase, possession and transport of all fireworks this week prior to Bastille Day to prevent them being misused.

I suspect those police are taught to fire accurately including under pressure.

Putting other things aside, need it have been a fatal shooting to the head? He had not drawn a gun.

This wasn’t a deliberate shooting with thought beforehand, it was either an instant reaction or accidental shooting, probably the latter.

Good post maddy.
sazz that has already been discussed - it could have caused an accident involving pedestrians, it’s not like carefully managed film stunts.

I can't understand why they just didn't shoot the tyres. That would have stopped the car without bloodshed

This is a bit like the case on another thread, where a girl was convicted of murdering her baby, and it was correctly argued that we Gransnetters don’t know all the facts. Nor do we in this case. We know only the basic facts. We know that a young man was killed by a policeman who shot him. We don’t know why he shot him. We don’t know what was said or what made that policeman shoot that boy. We don’t know if the boy had a gun or other weapons, or if his passenger did. We don’t know if he refused to follow police instructions such as get out of the car and keep his hands up. We do know that he was shot, we don’t know why or what happened. We do know that the boy was driving illegally, and that he was known to the police. We know it was a rental car. We don’t know how he came to be driving a rental car illegally or how he came to be in possession of it. We don’t know if it was stolen. We don’t know what caused the car to be stopped, what had happened before. Was there trouble in the area? We don’t know. We don’t know all the facts of this case any more than we know all the facts of the case of the girl who murdered her baby.
Using emotive language such as ‘executed’ doesn’t help. He was shot, he wasn’t executed. He died as a result of being shot. That’s all we know. We need to hear the evidence that will be presented at the trial, presuming there is a trial. We need to hear what the passenger says and what the other policeman says happened. We need to hear the evidence about the nature of the boy’s fatal injury. There’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know the facts. We cannot be judge, jury, and executioner. We need to wait for the facts to emerge.

Oreo

maddyone

Driving without license, tax, and insurance is very serious. It can have extremely serious consequences for both the driver ( as it did in this case but I’m not recommending that) but in my opinion the serious consequences for completely innocent people can be horrendous. We do see it in this country sometimes, not a policeman shooting the driver obviously, but uninsured drivers who have no license so never officially taught to drive, hitting other cars or pedestrians with catastrophic results and strangely the culprit, the driver seems to often walk away unharmed.
I can’t understand the attitude on here from some that this is not a serious crime, but a bit of a prank, not very serious. It is serious and all too often has extremely serious repercussions for completely innocent people.

And I can’t understand your attitude either. A 17 year old boy was shot in the head and killed quite purposely by a policeman. That your idea of justice?
The police and the government both here and in France rule by our consent, and we don’t assent to trigger happy cops carrying out murderous acts.

Quite.. thank goodness

I sort of agree about the heavy handed bit Katie59. There's a scary "shoot first, question later" growing culture. Even more scary is that I'm sure Angela Rayner said she was in favour of this type of thing.

I often marvel at the bravery of protesters in such countries.

Police in many countries are very heavy handed, as we’ve seen in the French riots they handle rioters very roughly. On holiday in various countries it’s only the Tourist Police that are respectful, the community police are very different. The paramilitary police are usually not far away and they will use whatever level of violence needed

I wonder how the Policeman in England who refused to get out of his car and help someone being attacked would have acted if he had a gun on him.

That’s fine Oreo, we’re all allowed to express a point of view. You have your’s and I have mine.

maddyone

Driving without license, tax, and insurance is very serious. It can have extremely serious consequences for both the driver ( as it did in this case but I’m not recommending that) but in my opinion the serious consequences for completely innocent people can be horrendous. We do see it in this country sometimes, not a policeman shooting the driver obviously, but uninsured drivers who have no license so never officially taught to drive, hitting other cars or pedestrians with catastrophic results and strangely the culprit, the driver seems to often walk away unharmed.
I can’t understand the attitude on here from some that this is not a serious crime, but a bit of a prank, not very serious. It is serious and all too often has extremely serious repercussions for completely innocent people.

And I can’t understand your attitude either. A 17 year old boy was shot in the head and killed quite purposely by a policeman. That your idea of justice?
The police and the government both here and in France rule by our consent, and we don’t assent to trigger happy cops carrying out murderous acts.

Mamie

Is your last paragraph referring just to the Milice Dinahmo?

No. Racism and violence has been systemic in the French police for decades.

The failure of French policing at this incident has been widely criticised, in contrast with the patience of most of the fans:-

www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/feb/18/france-police-brutality-against-football-fans-champions-league-final

Is your last paragraph referring just to the Milice Dinahmo?

An example of the French police heavy handed behaviour. The even happened in 1961 but it is indicative of the force's mindset.

"The Paris massacre of 1961 was the mass killing of Algerians who were living in Paris by the French National Police. It occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, while some historians estimate that between 200 and 300 Algerians died.[3][4] Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as mass drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators into the river Seine.

The massacre was intentional, as substantiated by historian Jean-Luc Einaudi, who won a trial against Papon in 1999. (Papon had been convicted in 1998 of crimes against humanity for his role under the Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II.) Official documentation and eyewitness accounts within the Paris police department suggest that Papon directed the massacre himself. Police records show that he called for officers in one station to be "subversive" in quelling the demonstrations, and assured them protection from prosecution if they participated.[4][5]

Forty years after the massacre, on 17 October 2001, Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, put up a plaque in remembrance of the massacre on Pont Saint-Michel.[6][7] How many demonstrators were killed is still unclear. In the absence of official estimates, the plaque commemorating the massacre reads, "In memory of the many Algerians killed during the bloody repression of the peaceful demonstration of 17 October 1961". On 18 February 2007 (the day after Papon's death) calls were made for a Paris Métro station under construction in Gennevilliers to be named "17 Octobre 1961" in commemoration of the massacre.[8][9] "

During the German occupation of France policing was carried out by collaborators. After the war, a police was needed and it was thought that the existing police would form the post war force. Maurice Papon was an example of this.

.... nationale
It is good that things have now quietened down and also to see the solidarity of citizens with Maires and Mairies. I think it is perhaps hard from a British point of view to see their importance in French life, symbolically and practically.