Violence is spreading and intensifying on the streets of France despite the restrictions

Despite the government’s wishes — the interior minister said the “thugs” would withdraw — the reality is this riots spread to many cities in France since the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old who was shot by the police in Nanterre on Tuesday because he refused to stop the car he was driving. The acts and level of violence increased many times over: on the night from Thursday to Friday alone, half a thousand public buildings — schools, town halls, police stations… — suffered attacks or were the target of Molotov cocktails, and many young people took part in the attack and looted shops. The night resulted in 875 arrests, mostly minors between the ages of 14 and 18..

Given the seriousness of the event, Emmanuel Macron had to leave his stay in Brussels early, where he was participating in a European summit. At home, he presided over a crisis cell at the end of which he announced a series of “additional measures”, although he did not specify them, to deal with the violence caused by Nahel’s death on the streets of numerous cities. The government yesterday asked prefects not to operate buses or trams across France after 9 p.m., canceled numerous events and festivals scheduled for this Friday night and the entire weekend, and announced the deployment of armored gendarmerie vehicles to deal with the violence.

On the other hand, Macron condemned the “unacceptable instrumentalization of the teenager’s death”, above all, by “all those who use this situation to try to create disorder and attack” on French institutions, he specified.

In addition, he used the opportunity to call parents to be responsible because “among the organized, violent and well-equipped groups” there were also many young people, “some very young”, and “the Republic has no call to replace mothers and fathers with family”, said the chief the French state, insisting that they should be the ones to keep their children at home.

Macron also hopes to wake up the spirit of responsibility of major social networking platforms (notably Snapchat and TikTok) that serve to incite “a form of imitation violence” in the youngest: “some of them seem to be living on the streets of video games that have intoxicated them,” he said.

For its part, the French Council of the Muslim Cult complained about the development and warned young offenders that the images in which they act “will only serve to reaffirm those who stigmatize their neighborhood and residents.”

Le Parisien he interviewed one of the two people who were in the car with Nahel before the police pulled him over. The young man said that he would appear at the police station on Monday to present his view of the facts and assured that ran away in a “panic” and went to stay with his father in Marseille for a few days.