June 27's incident of police shooting in France that led to the death of a 17-year-old boy of North African origin has triggered a series of violent street protests across France that continued for the fifth day on Sunday. The Paris protestors were mainly teenagers from the French capital, Paris's poorer neighbourhoods, where the immigrants from France's former African colonies live.
As the reports go, the shooting-to-death of a minor boy by the on-duty police officer in the street of Paris, the centre of European civilisation and democracy, sounds quite strange! Such acts of indiscriminate violence by men in uniform are usually reported in the world media from the less civilised, undemocratic parts of the world. So, how could that 38 years old poiceman have the heart to fatally shoot a boy his son's age (though he might not have one)? Evidently, the three juveniles in the rented Mercedes car fleeing a chase by the police were not criminals. The boy named Nahel M. at the driving seat who was shot dead was known in his area where he lived as a kind boy. He used to play rugby at a local club and wanted to become an electrician. The victim boy and his companions were not criminals either as they had no such records with the French police. Then what kind of a threat did the poor, non-white boy pose that provoked the policeman in question to draw his pistol and shoot him point-blank in the chest? It could be further learnt that two policemen were involved in the mindless violence of hitting the victim boy with butts of their firearms one after another before shooting.
The tragic incident has been termed 'inexcusable' by the French president Emmanuel Macron. And it is good news that the police officer in question has been suspended from duty, arrested and is under investigation. The French president's approach to the issue is far better than what then-French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy (later president of France), who termed 2005's rioters 'scums' and two teenagers accidentally electrocuted following police chase 'thieves'. He would, perhaps, not use similar pejorative words to describe protestors if they were from the mainstream society comprising mostly better-off citizens from the white-majority neighbourhoods. And, perhaps, the term 'rioters' might not also be used to describe those protestors. Some western media outlets have already termed this latest violent street protests by the non-white teenagers as 'criminal'.
The inherent bias against the impoverished, underprivileged and largely neglected districts populated mostly by people of colour is noticeable not only in the police department, but also in the entire administration. Worse yet, the far right politics of France, which is basically anti-immigrant and xenophobic, has a considerable following among the French police officers.
The police shooting of Nahel at Nanterre in the western suburbs of Paris reminds one of George Floyd, an African American who was strangulated to death by a white police officer of Minneapolis police department in America. Violent protests followed across the US after the tragic incident in May 2020. But according to data collected by The Washington Post, killing of Black people by police has rather increased, not decreased, in the years following the protests. The extreme right, which is now stronger in French politics, may want the ongoing street unrests to go out of control.. President Macron has to be on guard.
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