NOURNEWS- France is enduring a massive protests following an emotional weekend when mourners gathered for the funeral of a 17 year old named Nahel Merzouk whose killing by police sparked a nationwide demonstration against the French government.
Here we will analyze the reason behind the protests, Nahel was of North African descent. The incident has fed longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies from rights groups and within the ethnically diverse suburbs that ring major cities in France. Several people have died or sustained injuries at the hands of the French police in recent years, prompting demands for more accountability. France also saw protests against racial profiling and other injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
Tuesday’s killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France so far in 2023. Last year there was a record 13 such shootings, a spokesperson for the national police said.
Even Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the president of Turkey, has blamed France’s nationwide protests on “institutional racism” and the country’s colonial past.
He continued and said: “In countries known for their colonial past, cultural racism has turned into institutional racism,” he said on television after chairing a weekly cabinet meeting. “At the root of the events that started in France is the social architecture built by this mentality. Most of the immigrants who are condemned to live in ghettos, who are systematically oppressed, are Muslims.”
France has always condemned other countries in the name of Human right abuses without any valid proof of those so-called abuses. One thinks in these times of turmoil and unrest, France, the holy protector of Human rights, will not use force and violence against its own people and will actually listen to the protestor’s Demands.
But sadly, the reality can’t be more detached from the Western countries slogans and façade acts about protecting human rights. According to Official reports, more than 700 people were arrested following the funeral on Saturday as police fired tear gas and fought street battles with protestors late into the night in flashpoint Marseilles. Even children as young as 12 or 13 have been detained during six nights of protests, and according to Gerald Darmanin, the interior minister of France, the average age of the 3,354 people arrested over the past week was 17.
Meanwhile, a fundraiser set up for the family of the police officer who shot Nahel has amassed more than €1 million (£840,000). Organized by Jean Messiha, a former adviser to the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen, the sad part is that this appeal has raised far more than the donation page set up for the family of the teenage victim who was shot and died by the hands of this police officer.
The deterioration of France’s fake policies as the protector of human rights does not end here. Unions representing half of French police on Friday said they were at war with "vermin" in nights of rioting over an officer's shooting of a teenager during a traffic stop. "Today police officers are at the front line because we are at war," the Alliance Police National and UNSA Police unions said in a statement echoing far-right turns of phrase.
The Unions said, “Facing these savage hordes, asking for calm is no longer enough, it must be imposed! Restoring the republican order and putting the apprehended beyond the capacity to harm should be the only political signals to give.”
It further reads, “The time is not for union action, but for combat against these “pests”. Surrendering, capitulating, and pleasing them by laying down arms is not the solutions in light of the gravity of the situation. All means must be put in place to restore the rule of law as quickly as possible.” According to their statement they will also judge the extent of the consideration given by the government, saying that if the officers will not be given greater legal protection and more resources in the future, “tomorrow they will be in resistance”.
Nationwide protests across France have prompted responses from abroad. Some sources have portrayed the protests as a war between France’s African migrant communities and the European ethnic majority - an even hailed by European supremacists on social media as a potential watershed moment which could ‘clean out’ non-European ethnic groups.
In Paris as the government of President Emanuel Macron has refused to declare a state of emergency. There have been growing calls for the military to take control of the situation and supervise new elections, which could again unify the country, with Macron’s administration having been faced with growing unrest over the past year particularly over highly unpopular pension reforms.
The fake protectors of Human rights in the world stage should listen to the demands of their own people and as Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani has said: the French government is expected to put an end to the violent treatment of its people by respecting principles based on human dignity, freedom of speech and the right of citizens to peaceful protests”.
NOURNEWS