French President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday that French troops would be withdrawn from Niger in the next couple of months, in the wake of a coup d’état in the Western African country this summer.
The military withdrawal from Niger comes after French troops were ousted from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, amid growing anti-French sentiment across the continent and military failures in containing jihadist terrorism in the Sahel region.
Macron also said France would imminently withdraw its ambassador, who had been living under effective house arrest in the French embassy in the capital Niamey, according to French authorities.
“France has decided to withdraw its ambassador. In the next hours, our ambassador and several diplomats will return to France,” Macron said during an interview with French TV channels.
Macron also said the military cooperation between France and Niger was “over” and that French troops would return before the end of the year. “In the weeks and months to come, we will consult with the putschists, because we want this to be done peacefully,” he added.
The military junta, which came to power in July, had set France an ultimatum to withdraw its troops that were involved in anti-terrorist operations in North Africa. France at the time pledged not to withdraw troops unless requested by the deposed Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum.
1,500 French troops are stationed in several bases across Niger.
In the weeks after the coup, France also said it would consider supporting a possible military intervention launched by the African regional body ECOWAS against the putschists in Niamey. With the decision to withdraw, that prospect appears more and more unlikely.
Fierce firefights and heavy shelling echo once again around the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh, an isolated region at the very edge of Europe that has seen several major wars since the fall of the Soviet Union.
On Tuesday, the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan announced its armed forces launched “local anti-terrorist activities” in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is inside Azerbaijan’s borders but is controlled as a breakaway state by its ethnic Armenian population.
Now, with fighting raging and allegations of an impending “genocide” reaching fever pitch, all eyes are on the decades-old conflict that threatens to draw in some of the world’s leading military powers.
What is happening?
For weeks, Armenia and international observers have warned that Azerbaijan was massing its armed forces along the heavily fortified line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh, preparing to stage an offensive against local ethnic Armenian troops. Clips shared online showed Azerbaijani vehicles daubed with an upside-down ‘A’-symbol, reminiscent of the ‘Z’ sign painted onto Russian vehicles ahead of the invasion of Ukraine last year.
In the early hours of Tuesday, Karabakh Armenian officials reported a major offensive by Azerbaijan was underway, with air raid sirens sounding in Stepankert, the de facto capital. The region’s estimated 100,000 residents have been told by Azerbaijan to “evacuate” via “humanitarian corridors” leading to Armenia. However, Azerbaijani forces control all of the entry and exit points and many locals fear they will not be allowed to pass safely.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy advisor, Hikmet Hajiyev, insisted to POLITICO the “goal is to neutralize military infrastructure” and denied civilians were being targeted. However, unverified photographs posted online appear to show damaged apartment buildings, and the Karabakh Armenian human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanyan, reported several children have been injured in the attacks.
Concern is growing over the fate of the civilians effectively trapped in the crossfire, as well as the risk of yet another full-blown war in the former Soviet Union.
How did we get here?
During the Soviet era, Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region inside the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, home to both ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but the absence of internal borders made its status largely unimportant. That all changed when Moscow lost control of its peripheral republics, and Nagorno-Karabakh was formally left inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory.
Amid the collapse of the USSR from 1988 to 1994, Armenian and Azerbaijani forces fought a grueling series of battles over the region, with the Armenians taking control of swathes of land and forcing the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis, razing several cities to the ground. Since then, citing a 1991 referendum — boycotted by Azerbaijanis — the Karabakh-Armenians have unilaterally declared independence and maintained a de facto independent state.
For nearly three decades that situation remained stable, with the two sides locked in a stalemate that was maintained by a line of bunkers, landmines and anti-tank defenses, frequently given as an example of one of the world’s few “frozen conflicts.”
However, that all changed in 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a 44-day war to regain territory, conquering hundreds of square kilometers around all sides of Nagorno-Karabakh. That left the ethnic Armenian exclave connected to Armenia proper by a single road, the Lachin Corridor — supposedly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers as part of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement.
What is the blockade?
With Russia’s ability to maintain the status quo rapidly dwindling in the face of its increasingly catastrophic war in Ukraine, Azerbaijan has moved to take control of all access to the region. In December, as part of a dispute supposedly over illegal gold mining, self-declared “eco-activists” — operating with the support of the country’s authoritarian government — staged a sit-in on the road, stopping civilian traffic and forcing the local population to rely on Russian peacekeepers and the Red Cross for supplies.
That situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid, save for the occasional one-off delivery. In August, amid warnings of empty shelves, malnourishment and a worsening humanitarian crisis, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, published a report calling the situation “an ongoing genocide.”
Azerbaijan denies it is blockading Nagorno-Karabakh, with Hajiyev telling POLITICO the country was prepared to reopen the Lachin Corridor if the Karabakh-Armenians accepted transport routes from inside Azerbaijani-held territory. Aliyev has repeatedly called on Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh to stand down, local politicians to resign and those living there to accept being ruled as part of Azerbaijan.
Why have things escalated now?
Over the past few months, the U.S., EU and Russia have urged Azerbaijan to keep faith during diplomatic talks designed to end the conflict once and for all, rather than seeking a military solution to assert control over the entire region.
As part of the talks in Washington, Brussels and Moscow, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made a series of unprecedented concessions, going as far as recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory. However, his government maintains it cannot sign a peace deal that does not include internationally guaranteed rights and securities for the Karabakh-Armenians.
The situation has worsened in the past two months, with an Azerbaijani checkpoint newly erected on the Lachin Corridor refusing to allow the passage of any humanitarian aid | Tofik babayev/AFP via Getty Images
Aliyev has rejected any such arrangement outright, insisting there should be no foreign presence on Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. He insists that as citizens of Azerbaijan, those living there will have the same rights as any other citizen — but has continued fierce anti-Armenian rhetoric including describing the separatists as “dogs,” while the government issued a postage stamp following the 2020 war featuring a worker in a hazmat suit “decontaminating” Nagorno-Karabakh.
Unwilling to accept the compromise, Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of stalling the peace process. According to former Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, a military escalation is needed to force an agreement. “It can be a short-term clash, or it can be a war,” he added.
Facing growing domestic pressure amid dwindling supplies, former Karabakh-Armenian President Arayik Harutyunyan stood down and called elections, lambasted as a provocation by Azerbaijan and condemned by the EU, Ukraine and others.
Azerbaijan also alleged Armenian saboteurs were behind landmine blasts it says killed six military personnel in the region, while presenting no evidence to support the claim.
What’s Russia doing?
Armenia is formally an ally of Russia, and a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military bloc. However, Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh have proven entirely unwilling or unable to keep Azerbaijani advances in check, while Moscow declined to offer Pashinyan the support he demanded after strategic high ground inside Armenia’s borders were captured in an Azerbaijani offensive last September.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko previously said Azerbaijan has better relations with the CSTO than Armenia, despite not being a member, and described Aliyev as “our guy.”
Since then, Armenia — the most democratic country in the region — has sought to distance itself from the Kremlin, inviting in an EU civilian observer mission to the border. That strategy has picked up pace in recent days, with Pashinyan telling POLITICO in an interview that the country can no longer rely on Russia for its security. Instead, the South Caucasus nation has dispatched humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Pashinyan’s wife visited Kyiv to show her support, while hosting U.S. troops for exercises.
Moscow, which has a close economic and political relationship with Azerbaijan, reacted furiously, summoning the Armenian ambassador.
In a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and secretary of its security council, said Pashinyan “decided to blame Russia for his botched defeat. He gave up part of his country’s territory. He decided to flirt with NATO, and his wife took biscuits to our enemies. Guess what fate awaits him…”
Who supports whom?
The South Caucasus is a tangled web of shifting alliances.
Russia aside, Armenia has built close relations with neighboring Iran, which has vowed to protect it, as well as India and France. French President Emmanuel Macron has previously joined negotiations in support of Pashinyan and the country is home to a large and historic Armenian diaspora.
Azerbaijan, meanwhile, operates on a “one nation, two states” basis with Turkey, with which it has deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties. It also receives large shipments of weaponry and military hardware from Israel, while providing the Middle Eastern nation with gas.
The EU has turned to Azerbaijan to help replace Russia as a provider of energy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an official visit to the capital, Baku, last summer in a bid to secure increased exports of natural gas, describing the country as a “reliable, trustworthy partner.”
PARIS — Britain’s King Charles III urged France and the U.K. to revitalize ties Wednesday, as both countries seek to improve relations after several acrimonious years marked by Brexit negotiations.
On the first day of a three-day state visit to France, the king said it was “incumbent upon us all to reinvigorate our friendship to ensure it is fit for the challenge of this, the 21st century.” Speaking at a banquet dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, the king said he looked forward to a renewal of the Entente Cordiale between France and the U.K, an alliance which marks its 120th anniversary next year.
The British monarch did not mention Brexit directly but hinted at relations between the two countries that had not “always been entirely straightforward.”
The banquet dinner was held in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, a venue long associated in France with privilege, absolute monarchy and the French Revolution. The banquet gathered together stars, business leaders and politicians from both sides of the Channel, including rock star Mick Jagger, former football manager Arsène Wenger and the world’s second richest man, Bernard Arnault.
During his toast, Macron said France and the U.K. would meet the future challenges of the modern world together despite the tensions created by Brexit.
“Despite Brexit … I’m sure, your majesty, that we will continue to write part of the future of our continent together,” the French president said.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron missed the boat on Ukraine.
Faced with Russia’s military build-up and subsequent invasion of its neighbor, Macron dove down a rabbit hole of fruitless talks with Vladimir Putin. At a moment when he could have taken the helm as the leader of Europe, he miscalculated and failed to seize the political initiative.
Instead, in Europe, it was the likes of the Euroskeptic British premier Boris Johnson who took the lead on rallying support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and providing arms. While Johnson was a hero in Kyiv, Macron infuriated the Ukrainians by insisting that Putin should not be humiliated and suggesting that Moscow deserved “security guarantees.” Ukraine, the French president said, was “in all likelihood decades” from joining the EU.
But a sea change has taken place in Paris since. The French president has now picked up the mantle as one of Ukraine’s strongest allies, pledging support “until victory,” seeking to lead on issues such as NATO membership and military support, just as Europeans fret that U.S. support is flagging, with increasing concerns that a potential Donald Trump presidency could deprive Ukraine of its most important ally.
“Macron was fixated by the idea of playing a mediation role between Putin and Zelenskyy. And this meant he was extremely prudent when it came to arms deliveries,” François Heisbourg, senior adviser to the International Institute for Strategic Studies said. But early this year “Macron finally understood that Putin was taking him for a ride, and wasn’t interested in negotiating,” he added.
French diplomats, however, won’t go further than to say the president “has clarified” his position on Ukraine.
Where the French have broken most significantly from their long-standing position is on the issue of EU enlargement. Beyond the war in Ukraine, France is now seeking new allies, wants to lead on enlargement and is war-gaming how an enlarged EU would work. There is frenetic diplomatic activity behind closed doors in Paris and beyond. The French government is leading consultations and testing red lines ahead of a big speech Macron is set to give early next year, setting out his ambitions for enlargement that has already been dubbed “Sorbonne bis,” according to several French officials, in a reference to a policy-setting Europe speech Macron gave at the Sorbonne University in 2017.
Change of heart
For months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the French president appeared to zig-zag on how to deal with Russia. Putin was a personality he had struggled to read. In a 2019 interview with the Economist, Macron mapped out a picture of how he reckoned a logical Putin would ultimately come to the realization that he would need to form “a partnership project with Europe.” It was a generous vision of Putin’s mindset that underestimated the gnawing historical primacy of the Ukraine question.
In December last year, Macron’s U-turn started to become more evident. He gave a forceful speech saying he would support Ukraine “until victory.” Only a couple of weeks earlier he had stated that the West should give Russia “security guarantees.”
In May this year, Macron hinted at a new awareness, telling Central and Eastern Europeans in Bratislava that he believed France “had sometimes wasted opportunities,” and failed to listen to their memories of Soviet brutality.
That same month, France gave the U.K. permission to export Franco-British Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, which was followed by deliveries of French long-range SCALP-EG cruise missiles. According to Heisbourg, it was a decisive signal, because France was doing what the U.S. has so far refused to do.
But Macron’s previous diplomatic serenades toward Putin have left their mark. According to a French diplomat, Macron “shot himself in the foot” in making too many overtures to Moscow, telling reporters that “Russia should not be humiliated.” In the early months of the war, “it overshadowed what we did do, the military support, the European unity,” said the diplomat who like others quoted here was granted anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter. Another French diplomat put it more bluntly: “Macron missed his Churchillian moment.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 14, 2023 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Macron’s government is now firing on multiple fronts in favor of Ukraine: EU enlargement, military support and NATO. This month, the French presidency announced they were opening talks with Ukraine to sign a bilateral security agreement following the NATO summit in Vilnius.
“We are not naïve, we took a big step … but we are not kidding ourselves that people will think France has changed overnight,” said a third French diplomat.
Speeding up on enlargement
As recently as 2019, Macron was opposed to opening membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania.
“France has never been anti-enlargement, but it has always been prudent about it,” said Georgina Wright, Europe director at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. “France has always said the EU must deepen before it can widen, because there was a fear by enlarging the EU would become more dysfunctional,” she said.
But in a recent speech, Macron called for “boldness” in embracing enlargement, floating the idea of a “multispeed Europe” to keep up the drive toward greater integration.
For France, the change is also set against the realization that the Balkans and Moldova — not just Ukraine — are on the front lines of a hybrid war against Russia.
“There’s a real awakening that we are on the eve of a historic moment, similar to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, with a new wave of EU enlargement …which will help stabilize the Continent,” said Benjamin Haddad, an MP for Macron’s Renaissance party.
But the change of heart may also boil down to some hard-nosed political calculus. France’s initial diplomatic initiatives with Putin alienated Central and Eastern Europeans. With talk of the center of gravity shifting eastward, France needs support beyond its traditional allies such as Germany, Italy and Spain, if it wants to influence the change it now sees as inevitable.
Getting political
With the European election looming next year, France is gearing up for a battle of opposing visions, between Europhiles arguing the EU protects citizens and populists shining a spotlight on the Union’s failings.
In France, where the far-right National Rally is riding high in the polls, and most recently the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed ambitions to bring Ukraine into the Union — an anti-enlargement position held by several French political heavyweights before him, the fight is expected to be bloody.
Haddad says his camp will argue that the EU, even enlarged, will protect citizens against the upheavals of the world: the war in Ukraine, “a predatory China,” and a possible Trump presidency. “If the far right had been in power … Russia would be occupying all of Ukraine,” he said.
But what may also undermine Macron’s new drive is what Heisbourg calls “the temptation towards mediation,” adding that the French president failed to recall France’s policy on Taiwan during a visit to Beijing, in a bid to get China to play a mediation role with Russia.
“This temptation makes our partners skeptical despite the real and profound change [in France], the fear is that we might return to our old ways,” he added.
Forget about the scuttled submarine deal that plunged Australia-France relations to an historic low. Paris and Canberra are acting like besties again, thanks to football and online bantz.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have spent most of the weekend joshing about their national teams — Les Bleues and the Matildas — facing off in the quarter-finals of the Women’s World Cup, which Australia is co-hosting with New Zealand.
Ahead of the Saturday match, Albanese threw down the gauntlet in a social media post. “How about a bet @EmmanuelMacron? If [Australia] win tonight, you’ll support Australia in the semi-finals. If [France] win, I’ll support France. Deal?” the Aussie leader wrote. Macron gamely accepted the challenge, not without first praising Australia for “brilliantly” co-organizing the tournament.
The camaraderie is a far cry from where the two country’s relations stood in 2021, when France recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the U.S. after the two countries and the U.K. had cut a deal — dubbed AUKUS— to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, which entailed the cancellation of a pre-existing €53 billion contract with France. Paris’s fury at the loss was palpable, with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling AUKUS “really a stab in the back.”
That ire appears to have subsided, at least when it comes to football. After the Matildas defeated Les Bleues 7-6 in a thrilling penalty shoot-out on Saturday, Macron said he will respect the bet. That might not have been too hard, given whom Australia is playing against in the next round. “Nothing personal against our English friends, but a bet is a bet,” Macron posted. “Good luck Australia for the semi-finals!”
France has a dream: to make a name for itself in the surging global artificial intelligence industry.
France also has a problem: It’s right in the heart of the EU, currently known more for regulating AI than for encouraging it.
To carve out a spot in that tricky landscape, French leaders are now hoping to foster one particular segment of the industry, called open-source AI.
“Open-source” computer code — publicly posted to be used and repurposed by anyone — straddles the line between the public interest and a private-sector product. Sometimes developed by universities, sometimes by companies, open-source AI systems are now playing a growing role in the industry. For example, Meta’s powerful LLaMA2, an AI model released in July, is open-source.
In June, French President Emmanuel Macron announced new funding for an open “digital commons” for French-made generative AI projects, a €40 million investment intended to attract significantly more capital from private investors. “On croit dans l’open-source,” Macron stressed in his speech at VivaTech, France’s top tech conference: “We believe in open-source.”
A matter of national pride
There’s a bit of pride involved as well: Officials see it as a way to take on the overwhelming power ofU.S.-based firms in theAI industry.
“We don’t want to live in a world with two or three or four monopolies and to have to negotiate the rights to innovate. So open-source can be a very important answer,” said Henri Verdier, the French ambassador for digital affairs and the country’s top tech diplomat.
France’s open-source focus comes as part of a hard push toward developing a domestic, francophone AI industry. At the same event, Macron said France would invest €500 million in creating AI “champions” — market and research leaders in the emerging technology.
One of its existing champions is an open-source AI firm. In June, Paris-based startup Mistral.ai — whose Frenchfounders hail from U.S. tech giants including Meta and Alphabet’s Deepmind — raised a whopping €105 million in funding by promising to create an open-source competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The firm’s backers include Cedric O, the former digital minister for Macron’s government.
Alexandre Zapolsky, a co-founder of French tech firm Linagora who, ahead of Macron’s set-piece announcement, had co-written a newspaper column calling on France to foster its open-source AI ecosystem, sawMacron’s speech as a major signal to investors, as well as his own administration.
“Our president endorsed open-source AI — and became a promoter of it — while speaking in front of over 2,000 of France’s top technology entrepreneurs and investors,” Zapolsky said. “And his message has been heard by all the layers of the French government.”
Following the speech, Zapolsky’s co-founder Michel-Marie Maudet launched OpenLLM France, a collective of developers and researchers collaborating via messaging platform Discord to build open-source Al.
France has some academic strengths to build on. It has also been pitching itself as the best place in Europe to train power-intensive advanced AI models because its nuclear power plants offer cheap and abundant electricity. Irene Solaiman, policy director for leading open-source AI provider Hugging Face, said that France was “exceptional in the EU in having labs that develop high-quality language models.”
Some of the top minds in this field are already French nationals — including Meta’s Chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun — but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to attract talent in an extremely competitive industry. “The U.S. has a lot going for it. Like, it has really stellar academic institutions that work on a lot of the research that’s relevant to the field. It has a lot of cloud [computing] providers,” Solaiman said.
A Continent-wide opportunity
In embracing open-source, France is hoping to take advantage of an EU loophole that might offer a friendly regulatory lane for open-source systems. The bloc is currently finalizing its Artificial Intelligence Act, which would ban some AI uses and create obligations for those deemed risky.
The European Parliament, in its version of the AI Act, exempted open-source AI systems from following the strict compliance rules imposed by the law. Kai Zenner, chief policy assistant to Axel Voss, an influential German member of the European Parliament, says that EU governments support this approach, which suggests “chances are quite high” it will make it to the final version of the law. (The AI Act’s final text, expected to pass in late 2023, is currently being negotiated by representatives of European governments and the European Parliament.)
Europe’s Parliament sees open-source as an AI opportunity not just for France, but for the whole Continent.“We completely agree with the French assumption: We see open-source AI as a big chance,” Zenner said. “If Europe really wants to catch up with the United States and China in AI, then without drawing on models or data sets from the open-source community, we would never have a chance.”
Industry skepticism
Industry leaders, though, aren’t so sure the EU law will give them enough running room. The proposedexemption does not apply when open-source AI is used for commercial purposes, which would likely discourage investors and startups in the space. Members of the open-source AI ecosystem — including Github and Hugging Face — have asked European policymakers for more clarity on what constitutes commercial activity when it comes to making open-source AI components available to the public.
They also worry thatso-called foundation models — the big software engines powering generative AI tools such as ChatGPT — would separately have to abide by a set of obligations under the EU law whether they’re open-source or not. This worries tech giants as much as it does open-source startups.
“The latest amendments from the European Parliament — they seem to impose potentially some pretty complex and potentially somewhat unworkable conditions on open-sourcing large language models altogether,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs.
For France and other European Union economies, it feels like a big piece of the future is at stake. Despite being home to world-class universities and talent, European leaders have spent decades watching their countries fail to capitalize on various waves of tech innovation, with the riches going to giants in the U.S. and China. The EU, meanwhile, has established itself more as a technology rulemaker than as a creator and exporter. Policymakers now are determined not to let the same thing happen with AI.
Cedric O,the former French digital minister turned Mistral.ai’s shareholder and adviser, says that Europe has one other advantage when it comes to developing open-source AI. Unlike the U.S., it lacks powerful corporate actors lobbying against the open-source model on security grounds.
“Europe has the ability to be part of the AI race,” O said. “I would say that — regardless of the fact that its AI is open-source or not — Europe has to do whatever it can to be part of the game.”
PARIS — An ongoing military coup in Niger is threatening to destabilize one of the last Western allies in Africa’s Sahel region.
On Wednesday night, Niger’s top military brass announced on national television they had overthrown the country’s president Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected in 2021.
“We, the Defense and Security Forces, united within the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, have decided to put an end to the regime you know,” Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane said, according to Agence France-Presse. “This follows the continuing deterioration of the security situation, and poor economic and social governance,” he added.
A change of regime in Niger could be a blow to the West — and more specifically to France and the United States, who have strong ties to the West African nation.
For both Paris and Washington, Niger is a strategic country in the fight against Islamist terrorism. Viewed as “one of the most reliable U.S. allies” against al Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram, it’s also one of the last Sahel nations that hasn’t deepened cooperation with Russia to the West’s detriment.
According to Le Monde, there are no obvious signs of Moscow’s footprint in the Niger coup, which is mostly driven by internal matters.
However the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit led by Yevgeny Prigozhin that is active in Africa, claimed credit for the coup Thursday.
“What happened is the struggle of the people of Niger against the colonialists,” Prigozhin said in a voice message posted in a Wagner-branded Telegram channel. “This is actually gaining independence and getting rid of the colonialists.” ㅤ “This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin continued. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.”
The same channel also posted a photo of Prigozhin shaking hands with an unidentified man on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit being hosted in St Petersburg by President Vladimir Putin. The posts appeared intended as a demonstration of strength by Prigozhin, who led a mutiny last month in which his troops marched to within 200 km of Moscow before standing down.
For France, Bazoum’s forced departure would mark yet another setback in the region, only months after French troops had to withdraw from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, effectively ending the Barkhane operation.
Paris, whose influence in West Africa has been significantly waning in recent years, has reportedly deployed about 1,500 French soldiers in Niger. The government in Niger has expressed satisfaction at the bilateral military agreement. The country was supposed to be a “laboratory” for a new type of military relationship based on equal-footing cooperation between France — a former colonial power — and African governments.
The French foreign affairs ministry issued a statement overnight expressing “concerns” about the events, adding it “firmly condemns any attempt to seize power by force.” The ministry also released a warning message for French citizens living in Niger, urging them to limit movements and follow safety instructions.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Bazoum overnight and expressed the U.S.’s “unwavering” support. “The strong U.S. economic and security partnership with Niger depends on the continuation of democratic governance and respect for the rule of law and human rights,” according to a statement.
For France, the coup’s timing is challenging, as French President Emmanuel Macron is on a five-day visit to the Indo-Pacific region with his Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and most of his staff. Blinken is currently also in the region.
Douglas Busvine contributed to this report. This story has been updated with comments by Prigozhin.
This system, which has faced pushback from digital rights organizations and United Nations experts, will get its spotlight moment at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. In July next year, France will deploy large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supportedvideo surveillance cameras — a first in Europe. (Not included in the plan: facial recognition.)
Last month, the French parliament approved a controversial government plan to allow investigators to track suspected criminals in real-time via access to their devices’ geolocation, camera and microphone. Paris also lobbied in Brussels to be allowed to spy on reporters in the name of national security.
Helping France down the path of mass surveillance: a historically strong and centralized state; a powerful law enforcement community; political discourse increasingly focused on law and order; and the terrorist attacks of the 2010s. In the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda for so-called strategic autonomy, French defense and security giants, as well as innovative tech startups, have also gotten a boost to help them compete globally with American, Israeli and Chinese companies.
“Whenever there’s a security issue, the first reflex is surveillance and repression. There’s no attempt in either words or deeds to address it with a more social angle,” said Alouette, an activist at French digital rights NGO La Quadrature du Net who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity.
As surveillance and security laws have piled up in recent decades, advocates have lined up on opposite sides. Supporters argue law enforcement and intelligence agencies need such powers to fight terrorism and crime. Algorithmic video surveillance would have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack, claimed Sacha Houlié, a prominent lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance party.
Opponents point to the laws’ effect on civil liberties and fear France is morphing into a dystopian society. In June, the watchdog in charge of monitoring intelligence services said in a harsh report that French legislation is not compliant with the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, especially when it comes to intelligence-sharing between French and foreign agencies.
“We’re in a polarized debate with good guys and bad guys, where if you oppose mass surveillance, you’re on the bad guys’ side,” said Estelle Massé, Europe legislative manager and global data protection lead at digital rights NGO Access Now.
A history of surveillance
Both the 9/11 and the Paris 2015 terror attacks have accelerated mass surveillance in France, but the country’s tradition of snooping, monitoring and data collection dates way back — to Napoléon Bonaparte in the early 1800s.
“Historically, France has been at the forefront of these issues, in terms of police files and records. During the First Empire, France’s highly centralized government was determined to square the entire territory,” said Olivier Aïm, a lecturer at Sorbonne Université Celsa who authored a book on surveillance theories. Before electronic devices, paper was the main tool of control because identification documents were used to monitor travels, he explained.
The French emperor revived the Paris Police Prefecture — which exists to this day — and tasked law enforcement with new powers to keep political opponents in check.
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon devised a method of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features | Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris Police Prefecture, introduced a new way of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features — the forerunner of facial recognition. The Bertillon method would then be emulated across the world.
Between 1870 and 1940, under the Third Republic, the police kept a massive file — dubbed the National Security’s Central File — with information about 600,000 people, including anarchists and communists, certain foreigners, criminals, and people who requested identification documents.
After World War II ended, a bruised France moved away from hard-line security discourse until the 1970s. And in the early days of the 21st century, the 9/11 attacks in the United States marked a turning point, ushering in a steady stream of controversial surveillance laws — under both left- and right-wing governments. In the name of national security, lawmakers started giving intelligence services and law enforcement unprecedented powers to snoop on citizens, with limited judiciary oversight.
“Surveillance covers a history of security, a history of the police, a history of intelligence,” Aïm said. “Security issues have intensified with the fight against terrorism, the organization of major events and globalization.”
The rise of technology
In the 1970s, before the era of omnipresent smartphones, French public opinion initially pushed back against using technology to monitor citizens.
In 1974, as ministries started using computers, Le Monde revealed a plan to merge all citizens’ files into a single computerized database, a project known as SAFARI.
The project, abandoned amid the resulting scandal, led lawmakers to adopt robust data protection legislation — creating the country’s privacy regulator CNIL. France then became one of the few European countries with rules to protect civil liberties in the computer age.
However, the mass spread of technology — and more specifically video surveillance cameras in the 1990s — allowed politicians and local officials to come up with new, alluring promises: security in exchange for surveillance tech.
In 2020, there were about 90,000 video surveillance cameras powered by the police and the gendarmerie in France. The state helps local officials finance them via a dedicated public fund. After France’s violent riots in early July — which also saw Macron float social media bans during periods of unrest — Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced he would swiftly allocate €20 million to repair broken video surveillance devices.
In parallel, the rise of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple in everyday life has led to so-called surveillance capitalism. And for French policymakers, U.S. tech giants’ data collection has over the years become an argument to explain why the state, too, should be allowed to gather people’s personal information.
“We give Californian startups our fingerprints, face identification, or access to our privacy from our living room via connected speakers, and we would refuse to let the state protect us in the public space?” Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier from the conservative Les Républicains said in June to justify the use of facial recognition on the street.
Strong state, strong statesmen
Resistance to mass surveillance does exist in France at the local level — especially against the development of so-called safe cities. Digital rights NGOs can boast a few wins: In the south of France, La Quadrature du Net scored a victory in an administrative court, blocking plans to test facial recognition in high schools.
Some grassroots movements have opposed surveillance schemes at the local level, but the nationwide legislative push has continued | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
At the national level, however, security laws are too powerful a force, despite a few ongoing cases before the European Court of Human Rights. For example, France has de facto ignored multiple rulings from the EU top court that deemed mass data retention illegal.
Often at the center of France’s push for more state surveillance: the interior minister. This influential office, whose constituency includes the law enforcement and intelligence community, is described as a “stepping stone” toward the premiership — or even the presidency.
“Interior ministers are often powerful, well-known and hyper-present in the media. Each new minister pushes for new reforms, new powers, leading to the construction of a never-ending security tower,” said Access Now’s Massé.
Under Socialist François Hollande, Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve both went from interior minister to prime minister in, respectively, 2014 and 2016. Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac’s interior minister from 2005 to 2007, was then elected president. All shepherded new surveillance laws under their tenure.
In the past year, Darmanin has been instrumental in pushing for the use of police drones, even going against the CNIL.
For politicians, even at the local level, there is little to gain electorally by arguing against expanded snooping and the monitoring of public space. “Many on the left, especially in complicated cities, feel obliged to go along, fearing accusations of being soft [on crime],” said Noémie Levain, a legal and political analyst at La Quadrature du Net. “The political cost of reversing a security law is too high,” she added.
It’s also the case that there’s often little pushback from the public. In March,on the same day a handful of French MPs voted to allow AI-powered video surveillance cameras at the 2024 Paris Olympics, about 1 million people took to the streets to protest against … Macron’s pension reform.
Sovereign cameras
For politicians, France’s industrial competitiveness is also at stake. The country is home to defense giants that dabble in both the military and civilian sectors, such as Thalès and Safran. Meanwhile, Idemia specializes in biometrics and identification.
“What’s accelerating legislation is also a global industrial and geopolitical context: Surveillance technologies are a Trojan horse for artificial intelligence,” said Caroline Lequesne Rot, an associate professor at the Côte d’Azur University, adding that French policymakers are worried about foreign rivals. “Europe is caught between the stranglehold of China and the U.S. The idea is to give our companies access to markets and allow them to train.”
In 2019, then-Digital Minister Cédric O told Le Monde that experimenting with facial recognition was needed to allow French companies to improve their technology.
France’s surveillance apparatus will be on full display at the 2024 Olympic Games | Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images
For the video surveillance industry — which made €1.6 billion in France in 2020 — the 2024 Paris Olympics will be a golden opportunity to test their products and services and showcase what they can do in terms of AI-powered surveillance.
XXII — an AI startup with funding from the armed forces ministry and at least some political backing — has already hinted it would be ready to secure the mega sports event.
“If we don’t encourage the development of French and European solutions, we run the risk of later becoming dependent on software developed by foreign powers,” wrote lawmakers Philippe Latombe, from Macron’s allied party Modem, and Philippe Gosselin, from Les Républicains, in a parliamentary report on video surveillance released in April.
“When it comes to artificial intelligence, losing control means undermining our sovereignty,” they added.
Lionel Barber is former editor of the Financial Times (2005-20) and Brussels bureau chief (1992-98)
Nobody does “No” better than the French. Charles De Gaulle said “Non” twice to Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community; Jacques Chirac said “Non” to the Iraq war; and Emmanuel Macron this week gave a thumbs down to Fiona Scott Morton, the American Yale academic selected for the post of top economist at the EU’s powerful competition directorate in Brussels.
L’affaire Scott Morton may seem trivial in comparison to the (still unresolved) debate over Britain’s place in Europe or armed conflict in the Middle East, but the French veto of the first foreigner to take up the post says an awful lot about the European Union’s current paranoia about America’s influence and power.
As Macron has pushed a vision of Europe that stands up to the U.S., resisting pressure to become “America’s followers,” as he put it in April, such thinking has strengthened in Brussels.
The Scott Morton fiasco brings back memories of a lunch in Brussels exactly 30 years ago when some officials suspected the U.S. was engaged in an Anglo-Saxon plot to sabotage their plans for economic and monetary union. “Remember James Jesus Angleton,” said a stone-faced Belgian bureaucrat, invoking the name of the legendary, obsessive CIA counterintelligence officer at the height of the Cold War.
Professor Scott Morton was selected as the best candidate in open competition. She enjoyed the backing of Margrethe Vestager, the Danish EU competition commissioner often described as the most powerful antitrust regulator in the world. She also had support from Ursula von der Leyen, German president of the European Commission, whose leadership during the Ukraine war and the COVID pandemic has won widespread praise on both sides of the Atlantic.
All this counted for naught. Despite her distinguished academic pedigree, Scott Morton, a former Obama administration antitrust official, worked for Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in competition cases in the U.S. The notion her background somehow disqualified her for the job shows George W. Bush was wrong when he complained the French had no word for “entrepreneur.” Today’s problem is that Paris has no understanding of the term “poacher turned gamekeeper.”
As Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister, tweeted: “Regrettable that narrow-minded opposition in some EU countries has led to this. She was reportedly the most competent candidate, and a knowledge of the U.S. and its antitrust policies should certainly not have been a disadvantage.”
Now, President Macron’s opposition to the appointment has attracted a good deal of support in the Commission, in the European Parliament and among European trade unions. Cristiano Sebastiani, head of Renouveau & Démocratie, a trade union representing EU employees, said senior EU officials should “be invested, believe and contribute towards the European project. The very logic of our statute is that an EU official can never go back to being an ordinary citizen.”
France’s veto of Professor Scott Morton is de facto a veto of Vestager, who was almost untouchable during her first term as competition commissioner between 2014-19. She won kudos for investigating, fining and bringing lawsuits against major multinationals including Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Qualcomm, and Gazprom. More controversially, at least in Paris and Berlin, she vetoed the planned merger between Alstom and Siemens, two industrial giants intent on creating a European champion.
Vestager’s second term has been a different story. She has suffered reverses in the courts which overturned punitive fines against Apple and Qualcomm. Then, although she ranks as a vice-president of the Commission, Vestager found herself challenged by a nominal underling in the shape of Thierry Breton, a former top French industrialist put in charge of the EU’s internal market.
Both have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence, a proxy fight for influence overall in Brussels.
Vestager and Breton have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence | Olivier Hoslet/EPA/AFP via Getty Images
Breton favors the so-called AI Pact, an effort to bring forward parts of the EU’s draft Artificial Intelligence Act. This would ban some AI cases, curb “high-risk” applications, and impose checks on how Google, Microsoft and others develop the emerging technology.
By contrast, Vestager favors a voluntary code of conduct focused on generative AI such as ChatGPT. This could be developed at a global level, in partnership with the U.S., rather than waiting for the two years it will take to secure legislative passage of Breton’s AI Pact.
So what’s the solution? If Europe is to have any chance of prevailing, so the argument goes, member states must take a far harder-nosed attitude to competition policy. This leads in turn to the creation of national or pan-European champions at the expense of crackdowns on subsidies and other anti-competitive behavior. In short, the very liberal policies designed to protect the single market’s level playing field and embodied by the fighting Viking.
For those who occasionally wonder how power has shifted inside the EU since Brexit took the U.K. out of the equation, it is proof indeed that “liberal Europe” is on a losing streak.
Actor and singer Jane Birkin, who made France her home and charmed the country with her English grace, natural style and social activism, has died at age 76.
The London-born star and fashion icon was known for her musical and romantic relationship with French singer Serge Gainsbourg. Their songs notably included the steamy “Je t’aime moi non plus” (“I Love You, Me Neither”). Birkin’s ethereal, British-accented singing voice interlaced with his gruff baritone in the 1969 duet that helped make her famous and was forbidden in Italy after being denounced in the Vatican newspaper.
The style Birkin displayed in the 1960s and early 1970s — long hair with bangs, jeans paired with white tops, knit mini dresses and basket bags — still epitomizes the height of French chic for many women around the world.
Birkin was also synonymous with a Hermes bag that bore her name. Created by the Paris fashion house in 1984 in her honor, the Birkin bag became one of the world’s most exclusive luxury items, with a stratospheric price tag and years-long waiting list to buy it.
“When I went to America, I don’t know in what interview, they said, ‘You mean Birkin, like the bag?’ I said, ‘Well, now, the bag is going to sing!’ I thought, ‘Oh gosh, on my obituary, it will say, ‘Like the bag’ or something,'” Birkin said to senior culture and senior national correspondent for CBS News Anthony Mason.
“It’s so funny that, after all this, you might be known for a bag,” Mason said.
In her adopted France, Birkin was also celebrated for her political activism and campaigning for Amnesty International, Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, the fight against AIDS and other causes.
“You can always do something,” Birkin said in 2001, drumming up support for an Amnesty campaign against torture. “You can say, ‘I am not OK with that.'”
She joined five monks on a march through the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 to demand that Myanmar let foreign aid workers into the country to help cyclone victims.
In 2022, she joined other screen and music stars in France in chopping off locks of their hair in support of protesters in Iran. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Birkin’s daughter with Gainsbourg and also an actor in her own right, cut off a snippet of her mother’s hair for the “HairForFreedom” campaign as Iran was engulfed by anti-government protests.
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed Birkin as a “complete artist,” noting that her soft voice went hand-in-hand with her “ardent” activism.
“Jane Birkin was a French icon because she was the incarnation of freedom, sang the most beautiful words of our language,” he tweeted.
French media reported that Birkin was found dead at her Paris home. The French Culture Ministry tweeted that Birkin died Sunday. It hailed her as a “timeless Francophone icon.”
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak called Birkin “the most French British person” and “the emblem for a whole epoch who never went out of fashion.”
Outside Birkin’s home on Paris’ Left Bank, fans mourned her death.
“She was a poet, a singer, an artist,” said Marie-Jo Bonnet. “She gave the best of herself and that’s marvelous.”
Birkin’s early movie credits included “Blow-Up” in 1966, credited with helping introduce French audiences to her “Swinging Sixties” style and beauty.
Birkin and Gainsbourg met two years later. She remained his muse even after the couple separated in 1980.
She also had a daughter, Kate, with James Bond composer John Barry. Kate Barry died in 2013 at age 46. Birkin had her third daughter, singer and model Lou Doillon, with French director Jacques Doillon.
Birkin suffered from health issues in recent years that kept her from performing and her public appearances became sparse.
French broadcaster BFMTV said Birkin suffered a mild stroke in 2021, forcing her to cancel shows that year. She canceled her shows again in March due to a broken shoulder blade.
A return to performing was put off in May, with the singer saying she needed a bit more time and promising her fans she would see them again come the fall.
Despite her decades-long screen and music career, Birkin suspected that, for some people, the bag named after her might be her most famous legacy.
The fashion accessory was born of a fortuitous encounter on a London-bound flight in the 1980s with the then-head of Hermes, Jean-Louis Dumas. Birkin recounted in subsequent interviews that they got talking after she spilled some of her things on the cabin floor. She asked Dumas why Hermes didn’t make a bigger handbag and sketched out on an airplane vomit sack the sort of bag that she’d like.
Dumas then had an example made for her and, flattered, she said yes when Hermes asked whether it could commercialize the bag in her name.
PARIS (AP) — France is staging a seduction campaign for visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, guest of honor at Friday’s annual Bastille Day parade, with the French president calling India a “key” player “in our future.”
France is looking to further strengthen cooperation on an array of topics ranging from climate to military sales and the strategic Indo-Pacific region. But human rights, seen as an increasingly pressing subject for Modi’s India, was missing from the vast agenda.
President Emmanuel Macron praised India in a speech Thursday evening before French defense officials as a “key partner.”
India is close to buying new French warplanes and submarines and played a starring role in France’s Bastille Day celebrations Friday.
India’s top opposition leader Rahul Gandhi is visiting communities hit by weeks of violence and living in relief camps in a remote northeastern state.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt has bestowed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Egypt’s highest honor as the two nations tightened their partnership.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has kicked off a two-day visit to Egypt in a trip that underscores the growing ties between the two countries.
“It is a giant in the history of the world that will have a determining role in our future,” Macron said, ahead of a dinner with Modi at the Elysee Palace. India “is also a strategic partner and friend.”
Macron, with Modi at his side, will preside over Friday’s grandiose annual military parade to mark France’s national day. Indian troops will march and three French-made Indian Rafale jets will do a fly-by.
As Modi arrived Thursday, India’s Defense Acquisition Council approved the purchase of 26 Rafales for the Indian Navy, an accord in principle announced by the Indian Defense Ministry. The price is to be negotiated with the French, a statement said. The purchase of three Scorpene submarines, developed by France and Spain, was also approved.
Critics have voiced concern about France giving such a perch to Modi. India’s 72-year-old prime minister is widely viewed as increasingly authoritarian and his Hindu nationalist party as divisive. In a report in April, the campaign group Amnesty International said freedom of expression had declined under Modi.
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday for “human rights to be integrated into all areas of the EU-India partnership, including in trade.” The resolution called on member states “to systematically and publicly raise human rights concerns” at the highest level.
Modi’s two-day visit comes as Paris and New Delhi mark the 25th anniversary of their strategic partnership. Crucially, it precedes Macron’s trip this month to the Indo-Pacific region, home to 1.5 million French nationals. Talks with Modi are aimed at ensuring the vast region remains a space where security, notably of the seas, and other key concerns like climate are preserved. Macron called it “an essential strategy for the balance of the planet.”
Modi is being courted by other nations. His two-day visit to France comes on the heels of his June trip to the United States, where President Joe Biden offered Modi a lavish welcome. Modi was recently in Egypt and he is to head to the United Arab Emirates after leaving France.
Ten personalities, including noted economist Thomas Piketty and former French ambassador to Denmark France Zimeray, implored Macron in a commentary Thursday in the newspaper Le Monde to “encourage Prime Minister Modi to end repression of the civil society, assure freedom of major media (outlets) and protect religious liberty.”
Modi, who governs the world’s largest population, rarely talks to the press at home or abroad. But responding to a human rights question at a rare news conference during his Washington trip, he said that “democracy runs in our veins” and insisted that there is ”absolutely no space for discrimination.”
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Youcef Bounab in Paris contributed to this report.
PARIS (AP) — “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: The lofty ideals to which France has long aspired are embossed on coins and carved above school doors across the land. Yet they are the polar opposite of what some French people who are Black or brown saw in a shocking video of a police officer shooting and killing a 17-year-old delivery driver of north African descent during a traffic stop.
That kid, some said to themselves, could have been me — or my children, or my friends. Within hours, the first fires of anger and revenge were lighting up the night skies of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teenager, Nahel, was declared dead at 9:15 a.m. last Tuesday. His left arm and chest had been pierced from left to right by a single shot fired before the yellow Mercedes he was driving then slammed into barriers on Nelson Mandela Square.
From the town on the fringe of the French capital’s high-rise business district, with its disadvantaged housing projects, glaring wealth gaps, and melting-pot mix of races and cultural influences imported from France’s former colonies, the flames of fury quickly spread.
Maritime nations have been finalizing a plan Thursday to slash emissions from the shipping industry to net zero by close to 2050 but experts warn the deal falls well short of what’s needed to prevent climate catastrophe.
An ombudsman office in Haiti has denounced what it called the “unacceptable slowness” of the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse nearly two years after he was killed.
Pope Francis will travel to the periphery of Roman Catholicism this summer becoming the first pontiff to visit Mongolia.
Scientists say global heat that inched into worrisome new territory this week is a clear example of how pollutants released by humans are warming their environment.
More than 200 cities and towns reported arson attacks on public buildings, vehicle fires, clashes with police, looting and other mayhem in six nights of unrest. The violence was nationwide — from blue-collar ports on France’s northern coast to southern towns overlooking the Pyrenees, from de-industrialized former mining basins to Nantes and La Rochelle on the western Atlantic coast, once hearts of the French slave trade.
After more than 3,400 arrests and signs that the violence is now abating, France is once again facing a reckoning — as it did after previous riots in mixed-race, disadvantaged neighborhoods in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
And the uncomfortable central question remains the same: What is France doing wrong that prevents chunks of its population, particularly among non-whites, from being able to buy into its promise of equality and fraternity for all?
THE PROBLEMS ARE BOTH OLD AND NEW
Among the factors being blamed and hotly disputed are problems both old and new: racism in police ranks and French society more broadly, poverty made more desperate by rising costs related to the war in Ukraine, decades of urban neglect, breakdowns in marriages and parental authority, and the ripples of the COVID-19 pandemic. Young teenagers whose schooling was interrupted by virus curfews and teaching shutdowns were among those smashing, burning, stealing and fighting with police — and reveling in the mayhem on social media.
For Yazid Kherfi, who spends his time driving from one housing project to the next, speaking to young people about how to avoid the route that he took into crime and prison, the violence was a cry of distress from a generation he says feels unloved and left by the wayside.
The minivan Kherfi uses has a quote from Martin Luther King painted on the back: “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.” But on his rounds, Kherfi says he frequently hears young people complain that police single them out because of their color.
“The police aren’t well trained to work in difficult neighborhoods. Some police are racist. There are violent police. They exist. I’m not saying all the police but it’s still a certain number,” he says. “Blacks and Arabs are stopped far more frequently than whites.”
“We are a long way from liberty, equality, fraternity,” he adds. “The reality is that people find all these situations very, very hard. It’s been like this for more than 40 years. So of course, every time there are riots in France, it’s linked to a young person’s death related to a policing operation. And the police rarely blames itself.”
From French President Emmanuel Macron down, government officials were quick to condemn the actions of the officer now incarcerated on a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Macron called the shooting “inexplicable and inexcusable.” The officer’s lawyer says his client feared, when the vehicle they’d stopped started moving again, that he and his colleague would be dragged along with it and crushed.
HOW TO TACKLE RACISM WHEN IT CAN’T BE MEASURED?
Measuring the scale of racism and racial inequality in France is complicated by its official policy of color blindness, with strict limits on data that can be collected. For critics, that guiding philosophy has made the state oblivious to discrimination. France’s census has no questions about race or ethnicity.
Still, inequalities are too glaring to be ignored. The government’s statistics agency found in 2020 that death rates among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doubled in France and tripled in the Paris region at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — an acknowledgement of the virus’s punishing and disproportionate impact on Black immigrants and members of other systemically overlooked minority groups. Other research has also exposed racism in workplaces and hiring.
“For 40, 45 years there have been warning signs about discrimination,” says Abel Boyi, head of a group called “All Unique, All United” that aims to reconcile young people with France and its republican values.
Boyi, who is Black, decries the state’s colorblindness as “a French hypocrisy.” He says he regularly encounters young people of color and also white people from disadvantaged neighborhoods who apply for dozens of jobs but aren’t hired “because the family name sounds foreign, because the address isn’t a good one.”
“Unfortunately, when there’s an injustice, there’s always a radical fringe that tips into violence. We saw these young people, aged 12 to 19 … at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning burning cars, stoning police officers, stoning buses. It’s terrible,” Boyi says. “The anger is righteous but the method is wrong.”
THE VISUALS ADDED FUEL TO THE FLAMES
The video of Nahel’s death also helps explains the rapid spread and sudden intensity of the violence. As was also the case with the footage of George Floyd’s killing in the United States, the images left some people wondering whether police abuses sometimes go unpunished because they aren’t captured on camera. Spray-painted graffiti in Nanterre read: “Without video, Nahel would be a statistic.”
Police officer Walid Hrar says, however, that the relationship between France’s forces of law and order and disadvantaged neighborhoods he works in isn’t as broken as the rioting made it seem.
He runs a volunteer group of officers, The Guardians of Fraternity, who meet with neighborhood kids to try to build understanding and help them see that behind their uniforms, they are people, too. “Sometimes, the talks are very hard, very stormy,” he acknowledges.
But Hrar, who is of Moroccan descent and Muslim, says the police force has “changed enormously” and become more diverse since he joined up.
That was in 2004. France was swept by rioting the following year. He has spent his career in Paris’ northern suburbs where that violence first erupted, when 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
One difference between then and now, Hrar says, is that the new generation of rioters seems to know no limits, trashing schools, town halls, police stations and other symbols of authority.
“With some, the breakdown is total, that is true,” Hrar says. “There is real groundwork that needs to be done.”
Another key difference: social networks. This generation weaned on TikTok and Snapchat not only celebrated mayhem in short videos but, the government says, sometimes organized on their networks, too. Memes and hashtags about looting quickly swamped references about justice for Nahel. Macron said some rioters seemed to be acting out “the video games that have intoxicated them.”
It all adds up to something toxic and dangerous, with deep cracks in the foundations of a country still unreconciled with its often violent colonial past and with engrained discrimination and inequalities that defy quick fixes.
“How do we bring together the multitude of histories into one common history that concerns us all, regardless of skin color and origin?” said Boyi. “That is France’s great challenge for the 21st century.”
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Paris chief correspondent John Leicester has reported from France for The Associated Press since 2002.
PARIS — France is slowly catching its breath after days of large-scale urban unrest but a greater challenge looms for President Emmanuel Macron: How to tackle the root problems the riots have exposed.
Macron has walked a thin line between showing empathy and sending out a message of toughness after a police officer shot and killed teenager Nahel M. last week, leading to days of riots. He flooded the streets with police officers in an effort to contain the violence.
This weekend there were fewer arrests than on previous nights and the unrest appears to be waning, at least temporarily.
But the series of incidents have fanned the flames around police brutality and the treatment of racial minorities into a broader, violent rejection of French institutions.
Overnight on Saturday, attackers rammed a car into the house of the local mayor in L’Haÿ-les-Roses,a suburb south of Paris, injuring the official’s wife as she tried to flee with her young children.
Elsewhere in France, the violence triggered by the teenager’s death has targeted many symbols of the French Republic: schools, police stations, libraries and other public buildings.
“An unprecedented movement has hit territories that were not previously affected [by violence]. Public buildings were damaged which was not the case during the last wave of protests in 2005,” said a French government official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues more openly, referring to an outbreak of violencethat rocked France’s banlieues for weeks in 2005.
Over the past few days, Macron has sought to strike a delicate balance between showing compassion and resolve. He has described the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. as he was fleeing the police last week as “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.” But Macron has slammed the riots as “the unacceptable manipulation of a death of a teenager,” as well.
On Tuesday, he is expected to meet mayors from more than 200 towns and cities hit by violence. The aim of the meeting is to gather first-hand accounts from local officials, work on solutions and relay that the government is backing local officials.
“The president wants to listen,” the French official said.
After cutting short his visit to a European summit last week, Macron tried to show he is at the helm of the country, regularly calling crisis cabinet meetings, and issuing orders to his prime minister and ministers. On Saturday, he called off a long-planned state visit to Germany.
Permanently in crisis mode
The roster of meetings at the Elysée Palace is a familiar sight and a sign that the government is in crisis mode — once again.
The French president has barely emerged from a deep political crisis over pension reforms this spring and his government now is faced with more turmoil. Macron’s first term was equally rocky, as he faced Yellow Jackets protests, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-present threat of terrorism in France.
Macron has accumulated “difficult, painful crisis situations” that have “perplexed” the outside world, said Bruno Cautrès, a politics researcher with the Sciences Po institute.
“It’s as if France was a pressure cooker, [each crisis] reveals tensions, a conflict in society, tensions over the respect owed to our institutions … Our country is constantly invoking Republican values, but it appears entire segments of the population don’t feel this matters to them,” he said.
The outpouring of shock and anger over the death of Nahel M., who was of North African descent, has also forced many in France to do some soul-searching over issues of discrimination, integration, and crime in immigrant-heavy suburbs around French cities.
Public pressure to more closely examine French policing practices and allegations of racism in the security forces beyond re-examining rules of engagement is mounting. In 2017, for example, police officers were given the right to shoot in several hypothetical scenarios, including when a driver refuses to stop and is deemed a risk to life.
Beyond alleged discrimination by the police, fixing the growing rift between the suburbs’ disadvantaged youth and French institutions will likely require more money forpolicies aimed at addressing root causes and reducing social inequalities in areas such as education and social housing.
But addressing issues in the banlieues is difficult at a time when the government is attempting to reduce spending. After resisting calls to back down in the face of peaceful protests over his flagship pensions reforms, Macron reaching for the checkbook shortly after the recent days’ protests might be seen as rewarding rioters.
The need to reconcile the country and embody law and order at a time when his margins for maneuver are limited after losing a parliamentary majority last year is no small task for Macron.
He will have to keep a sharp eye on opposition parties as crime, identity and immigration — long issues the far-right has campaigned on — take center stage. If far-right leader Marine Le Pen has held back from fueling a backlash against rioters, sticking to her strategy of embracing mainstream politics, her trusted lieutenant Jordan Bardella has led the charge against “criminals” who owe “everything to the Republic.”
The recent unrest had exposed “frailties” that could “encourage a populist discourse,” the same government official admitted.
“[Our] political response must be a reasonable one, that addresses the reality and daily lives of the French,” he added. That’s easier said than done.
Clashes occur between rioters and police in Paris, on July 2, 2023, after the death of a 17-year-old boy killed by the police in Nanterre in the suburbs of Paris on June 27, 2023.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Fewer than 160 people were arrested overnight in connection to riots that have rocked cities across France following the killing of a teenager by a police officer, the interior ministry said on Monday.
The relative calm following five nights of heavy riots offered some relief to the government of Emmanuel Macron in its fight to regain control of the situation, just months after widespread protests over an unpopular pension reform and a year out from hosting the Olympic Summer Games.
The interior ministry said 157 people were arrested overnight, down from over 700 arrests the night before and over 1,300 on Friday night.
Three of the 45,000 police officers deployed overnight were injured, the ministry said, while around 350 buildings and 300 vehicles were damaged, according to provisional figures.
The grandmother of the teenager shot dead by police during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb said on Sunday she wanted the nationwide rioting triggered by his killing to end.
Since the killing last Tuesday, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls and other properties – including the home of the mayor of a Paris suburb, which was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday.
The interior ministry said 157 people were arrested overnight, down from over 700 arrests the night before and over 1,300 on Friday night.
Three of the 45,000 police officers deployed overnight were injured, the ministry said, while around 350 buildings and 300 vehicles were damaged, according to provisional figures.
The grandmother of the teenager shot dead by police during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb said on Sunday she wanted the nationwide rioting triggered by his killing to end.
Since the killing last Tuesday, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls and other properties – including the home of the mayor of a Paris suburb, which was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday.
PARIS (AP) — The grandmother of the French teenager shot dead by police during a traffic stop pleaded Sunday for rioters to stop after five nights of unrest, while authorities expressed outrage at an attack on a suburban mayor’s home that injured family members.
The grandmother of 17-year-old Nahel, identified only as Nadia, said in a telephone interview with French news broadcaster BFM TV, “Don’t break windows, buses … schools. We want to calm things down.”
She said she was angry at the officer who killed her grandson but not at the police in general and expressed faith in the justice system as France faces its worst social upheaval in years. Nahel, whose full name hasn’t been disclosed, was buried on Saturday.
The violence appeared to be lessening. Still, the office of Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 45,000 police officers would again be deployed in the streets to counter anger over discrimination against people who trace their roots to former French colonies and live in low-income neighborhoods. Nahel is of Algerian descent and was shot in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
President Emmanuel Macron held a special security meeting Sunday night and plans to meet Monday with the heads of both houses of parliament and Tuesday with the mayors of 220 towns and cities affected by the protests, said a participant in the meeting, who spoke anonymously in line with French government practices. Macron also wants to start a detailed, longer-term assessment of the reasons that led to the unrest, the official said.
Highlighting the seriousness of the rioting, Macron delayed what would have been the first state visit to Germany by a French president in 23 years, which had been scheduled to start Sunday evening.
The interior ministry said police made 78 arrests nationwide Sunday, French media reported, down significantly from 719 arrests the day before. More than 3,000 people have been detained overall following a mass security deployment. Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured in the violence, although authorities haven’t said how many protesters have been hurt.
French authorities were appalled on Sunday after a burning car struck the home of the mayor of the Paris suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses. Several police stations and town halls have been targeted by fires or vandalism in recent days, but such a personal attack on a mayor’s home is unusual.
Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun said his wife and one of his children were injured in the 1:30 a.m. attack while they slept and he was in the town hall monitoring the violence. Jeanbrun, of the conservative opposition Republicans party, said the attack represented a new stage of “horror and ignominy” in the unrest.
Regional prosecutor Stephane Hardouin opened an investigation into attempted murder, telling French television that a preliminary investigation suggests the car was meant to ram the house and set it ablaze. He said a flame accelerant was found in a bottle in the car.
The mass police deployment has been welcomed by some frightened residents of targeted neighborhoods, but it has further frustrated those who see police behavior as the core of the crisis.
On a public square in Nanterre, a young man of Senegalese descent said France would learn little from the latest unrest. Faiez Njai said of police: “They’re playing on our fears, saying that ‘If you don’t listen to us,’” — and then he pointed a finger at his temple and fired.
Video of the killing showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield. The officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide.
Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year, and three this year, prompting demands for more accountability.
“Nahel M.’s death first reflects the rules and practices for how police officers use weapons during roadside checks and, more broadly, the flawed relations between the police and young people from working-class neighborhoods,” the newspaper Le Monde said in an editorial on Saturday.
Amid the unrest, a World War II monument in Nanterre commemorating Holocaust victims and members of the French Resistance was vandalized on the sidelines of a silent march Thursday to pay tribute to Nahel. The slogans included “Don’t forgive or forget” and “Police, rapists, assassins.” The European Jewish Congress denounced the vandalism as a “shameful act of disrespect for the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.”
Life in some parts of France went on as usual. In the capital, tourists thronged to the Eiffel Tower, where workers set up a clock counting down to next year’s Paris Olympics. A short walk from Nanterre, a shopping mall bustled Sunday with customers from all walks of life. But in the empty square where Nahel was shot, someone had painted “The police kill” on a bench.
At the foot of a bridge near the Eiffel Tower where generations of couples have attached padlocks to symbolize lasting love, a Senegalese man selling cheap locks and keys shook his head when asked if Nahel’s killing and the ensuing violence would change anything.
“I doubt it,” he said, giving only his first name, Demba, for fear of retaliation. “The discrimination is too profound.”
___
Anna reported from Nanterre. Jade le Deley in Clichy-sous-Bois, France; Angela Charlton in Paris; Jocelyn Noveck in New York; and Helena Alves in Paris contributed.
Hushed and visibly anguished, hundreds of mourners from France’s Islamic community formed a solemn procession from a mosque to a hillside cemetery on Saturday to bury 17-year-old Nahel, whose killing by police has triggered days of rioting and looting across the nation.
Underscoring the gravity of the crisis, President Emmanuel Macron scrapped an official trip to Germany after nights of unrest across France.
French police officers charge forward during protests in Paris on July 2, 2023, five days after a 17-year-old man was killed by police in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris.
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
The government deployed 45,000 police to city streets across the nation to head off a fifth night of violence. Overnight, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted that the night had been calmer than previous ones, thanks to “the resolute action of security forces.” He put the night’s arrest toll at 427.
Some 2,800 people have been arrested overall since the teen’s death on Tuesday. Darmanin tweeted late Saturday that 200 riot police had been mobilized in the port city of Marseille, where TV showed footage of police using tear gas as night fell.
Near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, hundreds of police with batons and shields stood restlessly along the Champs-Elysées, several in front of the shuttered Cartier boutique. Posts on social media had called for protests on the grand boulevard but the police presence appeared to discourage any large gatherings.
Protesters run from launched tear gas canisters during clashes with police in Marseille, in southern France, on July 1, 2023, after a fourth consecutive night of rioting in France over the killing of a teenager by police.
CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/AFP via Getty Images
Earlier in the day at a hilltop cemetery in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teen, identified only as Nahel, was killed, hundreds stood along the road to pay tribute as mourners carried his white casket from a mosque to the burial site. Journalists were barred from the ceremony and in some cases even chased away. Some of the men carried folded prayer rugs.
“Men first,” an official told dozens of women waiting to enter the cemetery. But Nahel’s mother, dressed in white, walked inside to applause and headed toward the grave. Many of the men were young and Arab or Black, coming to mourn a boy who could have been them.
Inside the cemetery gate, the casket was lifted above the crowd and carried toward the grave. The men followed, some holding little boys by the hand. As they left, some wiped their eyes. Police were nowhere to be seen.
A woman pays her respects at the site where Nahel M. died, shortly after his funeral, on July 1, 2023 in Nanterre, France. Nahel M., a French teenager of North African origin, was fatally shot by police on June 27, 2023, causing nationwide unrest and clashes with police forces.
Sam Tarling / Getty Images
The unrest was taking a toll on Macron’s diplomatic profile. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Macron phoned Saturday to request a postponement of what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years. Macron had been scheduled to fly to Germany on Sunday evening for the visit to Berlin and two other German cities.
Macron’s office said he spoke with Steinmeier and, “given the internal security situation, the president (Macron) said he wishes to stay in France over the coming days.”
Nahel was shot during a traffic stop. Video showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield. This week, Nahel’s mother told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who shot her son, but not at the police in general.
“He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said.
Nahel’s family has roots in Algeria.
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. Critics say that doctrine has masked generations of systemic racism.
The officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide, meaning that 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 that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured in the violence that erupted after the killing. Authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters. In French Guiana, an overseas territory, a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet.
The soccer star Kylian Mbappé, captain of France’s national team, posted a message on social media Friday calling for an end to the violence.
The team was “shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel,” Mbappé’s statement read, but “the time of violence must end to make way for that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction.”
The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination, unemployment and other lack of opportunity in neighborhoods around France where many residents trace their roots to former French colonies — like where Nahel grew up.
“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. Hopeless young people were waiting for it. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have (jobs), our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, a 39-year-old transportation worker in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of riots in 2005 that shook France, prompted by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation while fleeing from police. One of the boys lived in the same housing project as Seck.
Like many Clichy residents, he lamented the violence targeting his town, where the remains of a burned car stood beneath his apartment building, and the town hall entrance was set alight in rioting this week.
“Young people break everything, but we are already poor, we have nothing,” he said, adding that “young people are afraid to die at the hands of police.”
Despite the escalating crisis, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option used in 2005. But government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from vacation.
France’s justice minister, Dupond-Moretti, on Saturday warned that young people who share calls for violence on Snapchat or other apps could face legal prosecution. Macron has blamed social media for fueling violence.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire promised government support for shop owners.
“There is no nation without order, without common rules,” he said.
Darmanin has ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown 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.
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host Olympic athletes and millions of visitors for the summer Olympics, whose organizers were closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the competition continue.
Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, three more 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.
A funeral was held Saturday for 17-year-old Nahel, a delivery driver who was fatally shot by police earlier this week in a Paris suburb, sparking days of widespread protests across France, many of which have turned violent and have led to hundreds of arrests. The situation forced French President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a state visit to Germany. Elaine Cobb reports from Paris.
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President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday scrapped an official trip to Germany after a fourth straight night of rioting and looting across France in defiance of a massive police deployment. Hundreds turned out for the burial of the 17-year-old whose killing by police triggered the unrest.
France’s Interior Ministry announced that in the latest night of violence, 1,311 people had been arrested around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to restore order. In the violence sparked by the teen’s death on Tuesday, some 2,400 persons have been arrested overall.
The protesters and rioters turned out on the streets of cities and towns, clashing with police, despite Macron’s appeal to parents to keep their children at home. About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.
The violence in France was taking a toll on Macron’s diplomatic profile. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said that Macron phoned on Saturday to request a postponement of what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years. Macron had been scheduled to fly to Germany on Sunday evening for a visit to Berlin and two other German cities.
Macron’s office said he spoke with Steinmeier and, “given the internal security situation, the president (Macron) said he wishes to stay in France over the coming days.”
Given the importance of the French-German relationship on the European political scene, the scrapping of the official trip was a clear sign of the gravity of France’s unrest. Earlier this year, King Charles III canceled his first foreign visit as U.K. monarch, initially planned for France, because of intense protests over Macron’s pension reform plans.
In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.
The teen, identified only as Nahel, was shot during a traffic stop Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Video showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield.
The police chief in Nanterre, where the shooting happened, said Thursday that the use of a weapon in the incident had not been justified. The officer involved in the fatal encounter has been placed under formal investigation for murder and is being held in custody.
Rituals to bid farewell to Nahel began on Saturday with a viewing of the open coffin by family and friends and culminated with his burial in a hilltop cemetery in that town.
At the cemetery’s entrance, with central Paris visible in the distance, hundreds of people stood along the road to pay tribute to Nahel. The crowd carried his white casket above their heads and into the cemetery for the burial, which was barred to the media. Some of the men carried folded prayer rugs. Before the burial, prayers were held at a mosque.
Applause resounded as Nahel’s mother Mounia M., dressed in white, walked through the gate and toward the grave. Earlier in the week, she told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who shot her son, 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,” she said. Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. The family has roots in Algeria.
Anger over Nahel’s death erupted in violence in Nanterre and in many major cities, including Paris, Marseille and Lyon, and even in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight. Authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters.
The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination, unemployment and other lack of opportunity in neighborhoods around France where many residents trace their roots to former French colonies — like where Nahel grew up.
“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. Hopeless young people were waiting for it. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have (jobs), our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, a 39-year-old transportation worker in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of riots in 2005 that shook France, prompted by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation while fleeing from police. One of the boys lived in the same housing project as Seck.
Like many Clichy residents, he lamented the violence targeting his town, where the remains of a burned car stood beneath his apartment building, and the town hall entrance was set alight in rioting this week.
“Young people break everything, but we are already poor, we have nothing,” he said, adding that “young people are afraid to die at the hands of police.”
France’s national soccer team — including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted — pleaded for an end to the violence.
“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of Nahel, the players said in a statement.
Early on Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets. In the neighboring suburb of Colombes, protesters overturned garbage bins and used them for makeshift barricades.
Looters during the evening broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said. Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, police said.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown 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.
“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation in identifying people inciting violence.
Thirteen people who didn’t 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.
The mother of a 17-year-old killed by French police said she blames only the officer who shot her son for his death, a tragedy that has sparked three consecutive nights of destructive unrest and revived a heated debate about discrimination and policing in low-income, multi-ethnic communities.
The boy, Nahel, was shot dead during a traffic stop Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Footage of the incident filmed by a bystander showed two officers standing on the driver’s side of the car, one of whom fired his gun at the driver despite not appearing to be in any immediate danger.
The officer said he fired his gun out of fear that the boy would run someone over with the car, according to Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache.
“I don’t blame the police, I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 in an on-camera interview.
Prache said that it is believed the officer acted illegally in using his weapon. He is currently facing a formal investigation for voluntary homicide and has been placed in preliminary detention.
Despite calls from top officials for patience to allow time for the justice system to run its course, a sizable number of people across France remain shocked and angry, especially young men and women of color who have been victims of discrimination by police.
That anger has, for three nights in a row, given way to violent protests across the nation.
Ahead of another expected night of unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 45,000 policemen would deploy across France on Friday, and that he is also mobilizing more special units, armored vehicles and helicopters.
Some 917 people were detained following overnight violence on Thursday, including 13 children, Darmanin told French TV channel TF1.
The death of the young man “cannot justify the disorder and the delinquency,” the minister added.
Confrontations flared between protesters and police in Nanterre on Thursday, where a bank was set on fire and graffiti saying “vengeance pour Nael” (using an alternative spelling of his name) was spray painted on a wall nearby.
Overseas French territories have also witnessed protests. A man was killed by a “stray bullet” in Cayenne, capital of French Guiana, during riots on Thursday.
Scars from three days of protests were clear in the suburb on Friday, as was the acrid smell left behind by burning detritus, which was being removed. Streets remained charred where burning cars used to be, with patches of graffiti calling on justice for Nahel and insulting the police. Near the site of a pitched battle with police, a smattering of dug-up bricks, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and metal barriers remain splayed about.
Across the country, 200 government buildings were vandalized on Thursday night, according to the French Interior Ministry.
All “large-scale events” in France have been banned as of Friday afternoon, and bus and tram services across faced a nationwide shutdown ordered for 9 p.m. on Friday evening.
In Britain, authorities issued a travel warning due to “violent” riots targeting “shops, public buildings and parked cars.” They also cautioned disruptions to road travel, local transportation and the implementation of curfews.
The German government expressed “concern” over the nationwide protests in France, adding there was no indication that Macron would cancel an upcoming state visit to Berlin.
The violence has prompted President Emmanuel Macron to hold a crisis meeting the second day in a row, BFMTV reported, as his government tries to avoid a repeat of 2005. The deaths of two teenage boys hiding from police that year sparked three weeks of rioting and prompted the government to call a state of emergency.
He had returned from a European Council summit on Thursday in Brussels to convene the crisis meeting.
The French president called for calm and asked parents to take responsibility for their children amid the unrest. He said the situation is “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable, especially when the violence is targeting public building.”
A third of the almost 900 people detained overnight are young, Macron told reporters at the Interior Ministry. Authorities will be investigating the role of social media in inciting the riots, and there will be further “measures” announced in the coming hours, he added.
Continued unrest would be a major blow to the government’s agenda. Macron and his ministers have spent much of the year dealing with the fallout of pushing through extremely unpopular pension reforms that were divisive enough that the government felt it necessary to launch a 100-day plan to heal and unite the country.
That deadline is up on July 14, France’s national day.
Macron attended an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday, even as the demonstrations boiled over.
Elton John’s husband, David Furnish posted a picture on Instagram on Thursday of himself and Elton John smiling backstage with the French president and his wife, Brigitte Macron after the show at the Accor Arena.
If Macron’s government is to address allegations of institutional racism in response to Nahel’s death, it will be a tough balancing act.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on France to address “deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement’ on Friday, a statement the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as “totally unfounded.”
The ministry described law enforcement in France as subject to various levels of “judicial control that few countries have.
“France, and its police forces, fight with determination against racism and all forms of discrimination. There can be no doubt about this commitment,” the ministry added. “The use of force by the national police and gendarmerie is governed by the principles of absolute necessity and proportionality, strictly framed and controlled.”
Race and discrimination are always tricky political issues, but in France they are particularly challenging due to the country’s unique brand of secularism, which seeks to ensure equality for all by removing markers of difference, rendering all citizens French first.
In practice, however, that vigorous adherence to French Republicanism often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to differentiate French citizens on the basis of race, including collecting statistics.
Mounia, like other activists, believes her son’s race was a factor in his killing. French media have reported that Nahel was of Algerian descent, and the country’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a statement extending its condolences to Nahel’s family.
“He saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said, referring to the police officer who fired their weapon.
“Killing youngsters like this, how long is this going to last?” she added. “How many mothers are going to be like me? What are they waiting for?”
While the government’s approach has so far been cautious, left-wing politicians and some activists have called for police reform, including abolishing a 2017 law that allowed police greater leeway in when they can use firearms.
Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer of the officer accused of shooting Nahel, told French radio station RTL that his client acted in “compliance of the law.” He claimed his client’s prosecution was “political” and being used as a way to calm the violent tensions.
He added that his client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and he did not want to kill him.
“He committed an act in a second, in a fraction of a second. Perhaps he made a mistake, justice will tell,” Lienard said.
French President Emmanuel Macron has a few theories as to why riots have spread across France in the wake of the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old delivery driver: TikTok, Snapchat, and video games, mostly.
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The teenager was shot on Tuesday, June 27 in the Paris suburb of Nanterre during a traffic check, according to the Associated Press. Nahel, who has only been identified by his first name, died at the scene, and his untimely death exacerbated rising tensions between French police and the residents of the Nanterre neighborhood and beyond.
Videos shared online over the last few days of riots show police firing tear gas at crowds and protestors lighting cars on fire, burning garbage, and looting. AP reports that as of Friday, 875 arrests were made within the last few days (a third of the arrests for one of these days were reportedly “young people”), with Macron refusing to declare a state of emergency and instead sending 40,000 more officers into the streets.
Macron said that social media networks are playing a “considerable role” in fueling the ongoing unrest, and he pointed to both Snapchat and TikTok as examples. He laid out plans to work with tech companies to remove “the most sensitive content” shared, saying that he expects “a spirit of responsibility from these platforms.” And French police are reportedly looking into the identities of those who post rallying cries to continue the protests on social media.
“Violence has devastating consequences, and we have zero tolerance for content that promotes or incites hatred or violent behavior on any part of Snapchat,” a Snapchat spokesperson told AP. “We proactively moderate this type of content and when we find it, we remove it and take appropriate action. We do allow content that is factually reporting on the situation.”
French president thinks video games are contributing to the riots
But Macron doesn’t just think it’s those dang phone apps that are to blame for the ongoing protests—he also turned his attention towards video games. “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living out, in the streets, the video games that have intoxicated them,” he said. It’s not, of course, police brutality, an increase in housing and income inequality, or the fact that race policy in France is just “be colorblind.” (Nahel was Arab.)
Protests centered around police brutality are not new in France: Citizens protested the 2020 police killing of George Floyd en masse, and in 2005, riots broke out after two young boys died while running away from police in the Clichy-sous-Bois commune in Paris. During the 2005 riots, former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin declared a state of emergency.
As psychologist Dr. Rachel Kowert told Kotaku in June 2022, “We’ve been studying [the connection] for 20 years, and there’s been no consistent findings that would suggest at all that they’re in any way directly linked, whereas we have a whole wealth of research linking, like pure delinquency, and low frustration tolerance, and previous exposure to violence, and all of these things that are very well established in the research as predictors of violent behavior, but we ignore that because those are confusing societal problems.”
