Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne pledged to adopt “extensive measures to protect the French” on the occasion of the National Day, which falls on next (Friday).
Bourne announced in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, today (Sunday), the ban on selling fireworks to individuals after rioters used them against law enforcement forces, and revealed that among the measures the government is considering is “imposing penalties on the families of young men who commit acts of violence.” These pledges come after unrest in France during the protests sparked by the killing of the boy, Nael, by a policeman’s bullet, punctuated by violence in a number of cities that the country had not witnessed in two decades.
The prime minister’s statements coincide with the participation of thousands yesterday (Saturday) in 30 mass demonstrations against police violence in Paris and other cities, especially Marseille (southeast), Nantes (west), Strasbourg (east) and Bordeaux (southwest).
The demonstrations responded to the call of civil associations, trade unions and political parties, and French people took part in “citizens’ marches” expressing “sadness and anger” against police violence and the killing of the boy Nael in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of the capital.
Two thousand people gathered quietly in the “La Republique” square in the heart of Paris in honor of the memory of Adama Traore, the young man who died shortly after his arrest by the police in July 2016.
And the police had announced before noon to prevent “an unannounced gathering that risks disturbing public order,” noting the difficulty in ensuring its security due to a shortage of many law enforcement forces after they were mobilized to deal with the riots.
“We are marching for the youth, to denounce police violence,” Traoré’s sister, Asa, said. They want to hide our dead. France is not in a position to give moral lessons. Her police are racist, her police are violent.” However, the authorities opened an investigation against her for organizing this gathering.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the statements of a committee of international experts, who strongly criticized Friday the way the security forces dealt with the riots and called for “a ban on racial profiling,” considering that these statements were “exaggerated and unfounded,” stressing “intensifying the fight against abuses of scrutiny described as based on features.
On Friday, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on France to ensure that the investigation into the killing of the boy, Nael, was “comprehensive and impartial,” calling on it to ban “racial profiling.” The committee’s experts regretted the looting and vandalism that followed the incident, as well as “reports of large-scale arrests and detentions of demonstrators.”
