On the Pablo Picasso housing estate in Nanterre on Thursday morning, smoke was still rising from the smouldering, twisted carcasses of dozens of burnt-out cars.
Shards of glass were spread across pavements from smashed bus stops, which children on scooters tried to dodge, and there was an overpowering stench of burning tyres and melted tarmac. After hours of clashes between young people and police until the early hours, fresh graffiti on buildings read: “Justice for Nahel. Fuck the state, fuck the police”.
France is struggling to contain the anger on such estates after the death of a 17-year-old boy, Nahel, of Algerian background, who was shot dead at close range by police at a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris, on Tuesday. Politicians fear a wave of rioting across the country. A fresh night of unrest lasted until the early hours of Thursday, as clashes with police and the torching of cars and buildings spread from estates around Paris to Lille and Rouen in the north and Toulouse in the south-west.
There was a mood of anger, sadness and shock on the Pablo Picasso estate, where Nahel had grown up, within view of the shining, mirrored towers of Paris’s business district, La Défense. He was described by residents as “an ordinary kid like any other”.
Young people on the estate clashed with police until about 4am, with deafening explosions from fireworks thrown at rows of riot police. Dozens of cars were set alight, along with trees. The teargas fired by riot police permeated blocks of flats, leaving parents fearful their children would breathe it in. In the morning, burnt-out fire extinguishers lay among charred bits of metal across the ground.
Kendra, 42, was walking along a row of burnt-out cars in the early morning to locate her father’s torched vehicle, now white with ash, which had been pulled into the middle of the road and set alight. He was a retired railway worker from Cameroon, and his children were trying to help him deal with the insurance claims this morning.
“For hours last night, there were young people everywhere, in groups on lots of different roads,” she said. “The police and even the fire officers were pushed back because they were being attacked. It was war. I really think young people here consider themselves at war. They see it as war against the system. It is not just against the police, it goes further than that, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing it all across France. It’s not just the police under attack but town halls and buildings being targeted. The death of this teenager has set something off. There’s a lot of anger but it goes deeper, there’s a political dimension, a sense of the system not working. Young people feel discriminated against and ignored.”
Kendra, who founded a cosmetics business that she closed during the pandemic, was saddened by the night of rioting and struggling to explain the desolate landscape of burnt roads and cars to her young children. “I’ve hardly slept all night. You could smell the teargas in my apartment, I was afraid of my children not being able to breathe. Young people are angry but there has to be another way of expressing that. As residents of this estate, we’re powerless as our cars are burned. We’re the ones who are being affected.”
Patrick, a builder from Martinique who moved to the estate 20 years ago with his wife, surveyed the burnt roads and cars. “It’s desolate. It was really violent. From 10pm to 3am, I stayed inside listening to deafening bangs from the fireworks thrown at police. I’m afraid there is going to be a lot more of this in coming nights.”
Cherin, 36, a mother of three children who lives in a tower block not far from Nahel’s grandmother, said she had watched from her window as the sky was lit up by fireworks thrown at police. “The noise of bangs and explosions was deafening at night. The teargas rose to our windows and stung our eyes. We were really afraid that a fire would break out below the building and we’d be trapped, unable to escape. It’s very hard. It’s us, the people who live here, who are suffering from this. We’re really afraid.”
On the estate, young local mothers of the same north African background as Nahel’s family said they regularly experienced racism and discrimination and feared for their children.
Sarah, 30, a mother of four boys who lives in a tower block on the estate, said: “The mood here can be compared to the issues of police shootings and racism in US. People here are saying it is not right for the police to kill a young person of colour at close range for a traffic offence. Young people are fed up with racism in general. I have four sons, I’m worried for all of them. But I’m afraid that this reaction, where young people are clashing with police at night on the estates, at will just make things worse. Far-right politicians will say: ‘Oh look, it’s them again,’ and they will use it against people who live on estates. We really hope things will calm down. We really hope we can sleep tonight.”
