Rioting raged in cities around France for a fourth night on Friday, just 10 weeks out from the country hosting the Rugby World Cup.
The hosts are set to play New Zealand at Paris' Stade de France in the opener on September 8, but right now the nation is in crisis as chaos reigns on the streets. Shops are being looted and cars torched in disorder replicated across a number of other French cities, including Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon and Toulouse - all World Cup venues.
Despite massive police deployment, cars and buildings were set ablaze and stores looted on Friday night as family and friends prepared to bury the 17-year-old boy whose killing by a police officer sparked the unrest. The funeral ceremony for the teenager, identified only as Nahel, who was shot by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday, began on Saturday. Family and friends were viewing the open coffin before it will be taken to a mosque for a ceremony and later burial in a town cemetery.
France's Interior Ministry announced that more than 1,300 arrests had been made overnight around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell violence. Despite an appeal to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on. Around 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, authorities said.
President Macron cut short a trip to Brussels for a crisis meeting with ministers and security chiefs in Paris on Friday morning but, in the face of the escalating crisis, has so far held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005 for riots which lasted three weeks. Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from annual leave.
International rugby teams will be descending on French bases over the coming months ahead of the tournament, with England’s opening match against Argentina being staged on September 9 in Marseille, the same city where a day later Scotland begin their campaign against defending champions South Africa. Over the same two days, Wales and Ireland both kick off their campaigns in Bordeaux, the scene of serious trouble this week.
The global rugby showpiece is set to smash records with 600,000 international visitors expected in France, and around 2,500,000 tickets sold.
Ex-All Blacks midfielder Malakai Fekitoa, who has switched allegiance to Tonga ahead of the tournament, said on Twitter: "What is going on in #France? Hope this doesn’t affect the RWC in a few months... It’s like war zone over there."
Tonga begin their World Cup campaign against Ireland on September 16 in Nantes.
The UK Government's Foreign Office updated its travel advice for France on Friday morning, warning Brits they may face disruption amid advice to monitor the media. The government urged travellers to avoid the riots, saying their locations and timings were "unpredictable", while they also said it was "more important than ever" to get travel insurance and some local authorities may impose further curfews or travel restrictions.
While bringing an end to the rioting in France ahead of the World Cup is one thing, ensuring it does not flare up again during the seven-week competition is quite another.
Earlier this year, World Rugby chief executive Alan Gilpin insisted the tournament organisers were preparing for a “wide range of different scenarios” and would be able to manage any protests or events that threaten safety at the World Cup.
“Like every major event, we are planning all the time for such a wide range of different scenarios, and protests of any nature are certainly part of that,” said Gilpin. “Of course, it is an area of challenging concern, but it is an area we are planning for, and like all of those scenarios we are working incredibly closely with the authorities in the various host cities. While I am sure, as there is in every major event and every RWC, there will be incidents we need to deal with, I think we will be well prepared for that.
“There are lessons to learn, clearly, from incidents like at the Stade de France and the Champions League final last year. There has been an enormous amount of debate around that. We are confident in those plans, but like any time we are talking about safety, we are not complacent and there is a huge amount of work that has been done and that will continue.
“A Rugby World Cup over seven weekends, 48 matches in nine cities is a big undertaking, so we are pretty relentless about the planning from a safety perspective. We can reassure rugby fans that are travelling to France, or that will be in France for the tournament, that their safety along with the teams and the players are our top priority. The French government, the cities are all part of that effort.”
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the summer Olympic Games. Organisers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for Paris 2024 continue.
Any disruption to France staging the World Cup would follow President Macron being forced to cancel the state visit of King Charles in March because of violent street opposition to his pension reform bill, while the shambolic 2022 Champions League final in Paris will also be fresh in sports fans' memories. France had stepped in to host the final after Uefa stripped St Petersburg of the right to host the final due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the evening descended into chaos with supporters from Liverpool and Real Madrid attacked by thugs outside Stade de France and bullied by police inside.
France's national football team - including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods where the anger is rooted - pleaded for an end to the violence.
"Many of us are from working-class neighbourhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness" over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, the players said in a statement. "Violence resolves nothing. There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself." They said it is time for "mourning, dialogue and reconstruction" instead.
Nahel's killing has stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects who struggle with poverty, unemployment and racial discrimination.
The subsequent rioting is the worst France has seen in years and puts new pressure on Mr Macron, who blamed social media for fuelling the violence.
In Friday's night violence, more than 1,300 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of shops ransacked. While the number of overnight arrests was the highest yet, there were fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than the previous night, the Interior Ministry said. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the violence was of "much less intensity".
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been hurt, but authorities have not released injury tallies for protesters.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping centre, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered shop, authorities said.
Mr Darmanin ordered a nationwide night-time shutdown on Friday of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters' targets. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.
Mr Macron, too, zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched. Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organise unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude the officer's use of his weapon was not legally justified.
Nahel's mother, identified as Mounia M, told France 5 television she was angry at the officer but not at the police in general.
"He saw a little Arab-looking kid; he wanted to take his life," she said. "A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children's lives." The family has roots in Algeria.
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colourblind universalism. In the wake of Nahel's killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behaviour.
Thirteen people who did not comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota.
This week's protests echoed the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
