Processions and demonstrations are not a new thing in France, but what happened last week and the reason for which it happened, is a matter of concern not only for France, but for the whole of Europe and the countries of the western world. Last Tuesday, a 17-year-old Algerian-origin teenager, Nahel Merjik, was shot dead by a policeman while fleeing a car in a bus lane in the Paris suburb of Notre. Police said that instead of stopping on their signal, Nahel tried to run the car over them. In France, both driving a car before the age of 18 and driving a car in a bus lane are crimes. Incidentally, a passer-by recorded the incident and put the video on social media.
Protests, vandalism, arson and looting began in Nontere and Paris as soon as the video exposed the police lies went viral, and from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south, Nonte, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice And spread to many cities like Strasbourg. Not only police stations, government offices, residences, libraries, buses, and cars were attacked. The Alcazar Library, a 165-year-old historic building in the southern city of Marseille, was attacked, but police arrived in time to save one million books. The house of the mayor of Lai-le Rose, a southern suburb of Paris, was attacked and his wife and children, who were trying to save their lives, were attacked with explosive rockets. Shops were also looted and ransacked. Eyewitnesses and social organizations say that more than a third of the rioters were teenagers. Police say that more than three thousand rioters have been arrested. Nahel was buried on Sunday amid tight security. Nahel’s maternal grandmother has appealed to stop the vandalism and looting, saying that Nahel’s memory will not be honored by the riots.
Describing the police action to restore peace as inexcusable and incomprehensible, President Macron said that there can be no justification for the death of a young man. Still, he had to leave his trip to Germany to control the situation, but the question arises why the policeman fired at Nahel? Analysts say that the reason for this is the law of internal security, which was implemented in 2017 with the aim of strengthening the hands of the police to deal with terrorism and crime after the 2015 terrorist attacks. This law makes the rules for the use of weapons flexible, so that the police can use weapons in situations in which they fear danger to their own lives or the lives of the general public, but sociologists and human rights organizations say that the use of weapons It can be no coincidence that the majority of the more than 25 drivers killed in the last five years, since the rules were relaxed, are of Arab and African descent.
This proves that the French police work with racial discrimination, which needs extensive reforms and training to overcome. The trouble is that President Macron and his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne are so dependent on the police and paramilitary forces to enforce their reform policies that they can do little more than formal criticism. France claims and prides itself on being a color-neutral and secular republic, but all surveys show that dark-skinned people are many times more likely to be searched than whites. In December 2020, President Macron had shown the courage to accept the same thing clearly, but the police unions got angry with this and stopped stopping the traffic and checking the identity cards of the people.
France is facing two big problems at the moment. Institutionalized racism and the gap between ideals and reality. To say that the motto of the French Republic is liberty, equality and fraternity. Keeping private life away from the interference of the republic and keeping the republic away from the interference of religion is also the ideal of France, which President Macron often repeats, but the reality is completely opposite. They are so troubled by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism that they want to mold their Islamic citizens into such a French Islam, which does not put much emphasis on dress, food and madrassa education. One reason for this is that according to the French National Bureau of Statistics, the Muslim population in France has increased to 10 percent. Most of these are from North African countries, such as Algeria, which have been colonies of France. Most live in big cities, so their proportion is even higher there. Like 20 percent of the population of Marse is Muslim, 15 percent of Paris and 26 percent of Montpellier. Arabs or Africans, most of the minorities live in multi-storey buildings in the suburbs of the cities, in which life is similar to the chawls of Mumbai. Apart from people associated with hard work and small jobs, a large number of unemployed live here.
The people here are completely disillusioned with the three ideals of the French Republic – liberty, equality and fraternity. Demonstrations and riots often start from these areas, so the police see these areas as centers of lawlessness and crime. These people are also the most victims of racial discrimination. Its first disgusting form was seen in October 1961, when police attacked 30,000 Algerians protesting in Paris in support of Algeria’s independence and killed more than two hundred protesters. The spread of Islamic terrorism has also added an aspect of religious discrimination to it. There is every possibility of racial discrimination as well as religious discrimination being involved in the death of Nahel Marjik. Because of the lofty ideals of the French Republic, the government is not even ready to accept these discriminations, economic disparities and disillusionment, let alone remove them.
(These are the personal views of the author)
