To the French president, Emmanuel Macrona new front has opened up when the crisis unleashed by the approval of the unpopular pension reform has just ended, which ended with four months of protests in the streets. The wave of riots that the Government is now facing is of a different and more sensitive nature: it comes from afar and stirs up the worst ghosts of a France with problems of integration of part of its population and with some forces of order whose actions are being questioned more and more.
The death of Nahel, 17 years old, last Tuesday at a police checkpoint after being shot by an agent has ignited the violence in the slums of France, the so-called suburb, which are marginal areas where French people with parents and grandparents of immigrant origin live, especially from the former French colonies. The country has experienced another night of riots in these neighborhoods of different cities in the country, while the Government tries to stop what could become a powder keg.
President Macron has convened first thing in the morning a crisis cell for “preparing for the coming days”, and with the aim that “calm can return” to the streets. Before beginning the meeting with his ministers, he described the violence in recent days against “the symbols of the Republic” as intolerable. No one forgets the wave of riots in 2005, which began with the death of two young people who were electrocuted in a police chase and ended with thousands of arrests, several deaths, and forced the declaration of a state of emergency.
The Minister of the Interior has mobilized an unprecedented device for the night, in anticipation of new altercations: There are 40,000 agents throughout the country, 5,000 of them only in the Parisian region, the hottest territory and where incidents have been recorded in a dozen suburban towns.
To make a comparison: At the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris next summer, which is considered a high-risk event, about 35,000 are expected. “They will have the technical and technological means at their disposal to deal with the riots, make arrests and restore republican order,” Darmanin said.