Behind the smoke and fire of riots in France

The shooting death of a young African American man by police has sparked major riots and reignited disputes between police and poor suburban residents in France.

Scenes of protesters clashing with police on the streets of Lyon, France during riots, June 30. (Source: AFP)

In France, the fatal shooting of a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent by a police officer was followed by brutal riots, exposing underlying tensions between security forces and black and Arab communities living in the country's poorest urban areas.

This has also sparked accusations of violence and racism by French police, a force considered to be somewhat tougher than its counterparts in Europe.

The dual problem of violence and racism

The incident is reminiscent of the shocking death of George Floyd, a black man, after a US police officer knelt on his neck in front of many people in May 2020. This event also caused a strong wave of anti-racism protests in the US.

Similarly, last week in France, violence broke out and quickly spread from Nanterre to other suburbs across the country and then to the center of the capital Paris. The images of the City of Light in recent days are of barricades, burned cars and public buildings, and looted shops...

It was the worst rioting France has seen since 2005, when mainly ethnic minority youths ravaged the country's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods for three weeks after two teenagers were killed in crashes while being chased by police.

Sebastian Roché, a police expert at Sciences-Po University, said that French police are facing “a double problem of violence and racism,” both of which are not acknowledged by the current or past governments.

Meanwhile, Mr. Éric Marliere, a sociologist at the University of Lille, assessed that images of similar incidents had appeared in the past but were not as serious as this incident.

“We are witnessing a very violent scene, like the case of George Floyd, and this has contributed to the increase of protest movements,” said Mr. Éric Marliere.

This is likely to be another major concern for President Emmanuel Macron, who is looking to restore his image at home and abroad after months of strikes in France over pension reform.

The Élysée Palace chief had to postpone a visit to Germany to stay and deal with the crisis. Last week, the leader was also forced to quickly leave the European Union (EU) Summit in Brussels (Belgium) to return to Paris.

Stereotypes about the police

It is not the first time that French police have been heavy-handed in dealing with cases, especially against ethnic minorities. In the early 1960s, officers under the command of Paris police chief Maurice Papon killed dozens, if not hundreds, of Algerians participating in a protest for independence.

In the following decades, the immigrant, poverty-stricken and crime-ridden suburbs on the fringes of France's major cities posed a significant challenge to the police.

However, according to expert Sebastian Roché, tensions between residents and security forces in poor suburbs have worsened over the past 15 years, especially since the 2005 riots when the police were surprised and lost control of the situation.

In the following years, under different governments, many new measures were introduced to police the suburbs, mainly by building tougher forces. Such as specially equipped anti-crime squads to make arrests and suppress the most violent elements. Officers were also equipped with LBDs, riot guns that fire rubber bullets.

According to statistics, French police are more likely to solve problems with guns than their European counterparts. Over the past decade, an average of 44 people have been killed by police in France each year, a figure far lower than the hundreds in the United States, but far higher than in Germany or the United Kingdom.

Part of the reason may be related to low standards and short training times for French police forces amid Mr Macron's efforts to rapidly expand the police force after he took office in 2017.

In recent years, the French police recruitment rate has increased from one in 50 applicants to one in five each year. New recruits now have just eight months of training, compared to three years in Germany.

However, the problem is not only about the quality of the profession, but also the regulations that police officers must comply with.

Following the Nanterre shooting, many have criticized a law passed in 2017 that allows police to use their weapons even when their lives or the lives of others are not in immediate danger. After the bill was passed, the number of people killed in private vehicles for failing to stop has increased fivefold, with a record 13 people killed in such situations last year.

According to a Reuters tally, the majority of people who have died during police stops since their use-of-force powers were expanded have been black or of Arab descent. Studies have also shown that, as in the United States, black children are far more likely than their white peers to be checked by police and may be beaten, insulted or otherwise violent during those encounters.

Riots end, conflicts remain

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has repeatedly asserted that, while there are some police officers who are not properly disciplined, the French police are not racists in general and that the security forces are “the best school for social integration in the Republic”.

The French view of society, which chooses to ignore the importance of people's sense of belonging to ethnic, religious or cultural groups, “makes it difficult to tell the truth,” said Michel Wieviorka, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Sciences-Po university.

Following the Nanterre shooting, mainstream French news media even struggled to directly address the question of whether the incident would have ended differently if the driver had been white.

For angry young people in the suburbs, the sense of injustice, discrimination and racism is very real, says Michel Wieviorka.

The unrest seems to go far beyond how they are treated by the police. Residents of France’s suburbs have less than average chances of succeeding in school and in the job market, with political parties increasingly treating these slums as “political vacuums” that they have little interest in.

Against this backdrop, riots have erupted with increasing frequency and intensity. With some 5,000 vehicles burned, 1,000 buildings damaged, 250 attacks on police stations and more than 700 officers injured in the past few days alone, the new wave of unrest has been far more devastating than the weeks of violence that rocked France in 2005.

President Macron is scheduled to meet with mayors from more than 200 towns affected by the riots this week. Few observers are optimistic that the crisis will lead to any real change as the flames of conflict continue to smolder despite the government’s declaration of an end to the unrest.

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