Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the death this week of the French teenager Nahel M in Nanterre is its familiarity. A man or boy of north African descent dies after contact with the police. A misleading or downright false account from officers casts blame on the victim. Outrage sparks protests and violence.
The unrest that has swept French cities speaks not to the shock of those involved, but their anger and despair that this is still happening. Not only police stations but schools, cars, tramways and town halls were attacked or torched in cities including Lille, Dijon, Lyon and Toulouse as well as the Paris suburbs. On Thursday, after Emmanuel Macron held a crisis cabinet meeting, 40,000 officers were deployed across the country.
Yet the contrast with 2005 – when the electrocution of two teenagers as they hid from police led to three weeks of riots – is also striking. The then interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, made remarks suggesting that the victims were thieves and ratcheted up tensions. This time, President Macron called the incident “inexplicable and inexcusable”. The officer responsible is under formal investigation for manslaughter. The most obvious difference is that these events were caught on phone camera and posted on social media – disproving the claim that the 17-year-old drove straight at police. Two officers are seen beside the stationary vehicle, one pointing a gun at the driver. The words: “You are going to get a bullet in the head,” are heard. The officer then appears to fire as the car drives forward.
For those in the banlieues, the footage is not a revelation but a confirmation. The anger is cumulative. They think not only of Nahel M but of Adama Traoré, who suffocated in police custody in 2016, or of Jean-Paul Benjamin, a father-of-two shot dead last year. Such cases are particularly potent because French law does not allow the collection of data on ethnicity, which would expose discrimination in other ways. As in other countries, the Black Lives Matter movement galvanised activism. People have spoken out at increasing volume. Yet they have not been heard.
There are particular concerns about legal changes six years ago, which critics warned broadened the standards for police use of firearms. A record 13 people died after not complying with a traffic stop in 2022. But the broader issue is aggressive policing techniques once used to control subject populations in colonies such as Algeria, and imported back to the homeland. They are evident in the handling of broader civil unrest, such as protests over pensions or by the gilets jaunes. But they are particularly toxic, and more often lethal, in the context of institutional racism, racial profiling and personal bigotry.
Economic grievances that were key to previous unrest appear less of a factor here than the rage at being ignored, excluded and discriminated against. Kylian Mbappé, the multimillionaire French football star who grew up in the French suburbs, tweeted: “I am hurting for my France.” The anger extends beyond police to other state institutions.
Many in the banlieues are afraid both for the safety of their children at the hands of police, and of the unrest. They are also concerned about how Marine Le Pen and the far right in general may exploit events. What they know is that things must change – and that it should not require another death, smartphone footage or mass unrest, to make it happen.
