Hundreds resist ban on march to protest police violence in central Paris
On Saturday, police dispersed a crowd from Paris’s gigantic Place de la Republique. People were seen marching peacefully near the square, far outnumbering police forces.
Issuance of: change:
In a decision posted on its website, the Paris police said they had banned the planned demonstrations because of the “tense situation”.
Ten days ago, riots sparked the murder of a 17-year-old teenager, Nehel M., in a Parisian suburb.
This demonstration was called by the bereaved family of Adama Traoré, a black Frenchman who died in police custody in July 2016, and protests are conspicuous every year.
After Traoré’s death in Beaumont-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris, was banned, organizers were looking to move it to central Paris.
“We are marching for young people to condemn police violence,” Traoré’s sister Asa told the crowd on Saturday. “They want to hide our dead,” she said.
“Freedom of expression is still enjoyed in France, but in particular freedom of assembly is threatened,” a medical worker who came to the rally despite the ban told Reuters. He called the ban “shocking.”
Authorities also banned demonstrations in northern Lille on Saturday, but in Marseille they were ordered to leave the city center and marched on a different trajectory.
Interior Minister Gerard Dalmanan said this week that more than 3,000 people, mostly teenagers, had been arrested in the six nights of rioting that ended a week ago.
About 2,500 buildings were damaged.
French authorities and politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron, deny systemic racism within the country’s law enforcement agencies.
France’s foreign ministry on Saturday, a day after the United Nations Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), denied the country’s legal system was racist. called France called for addressing “the structural and systemic causes of racism, including law enforcement”.
“Any accusations of systemic racism and discrimination by French law enforcement agencies are groundless,” the foreign ministry said.
(Reuters)
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20230708-hundreds-defy-a-ban-to-march-in-central-paris-against-police-violence Hundreds resist ban on march to protest police violence in central Paris
