2023-07-09 09:01:59
A few days after the death of the young Frenchman Nahel M., of Algerian origin, killed by a policeman during a traffic check, the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called, the day before yesterday, France to open “a thorough and impartial investigation” on the circumstances of the 17-year-old’s tragic death, which sparked nights of rioting across the country.
In a statement on the situation in France, members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged France to “open a thorough and impartial investigation without delay” into the circumstances leading to the death of the young Nahel , killed on June 27 in Nanterre, near Paris, by police fire, to “bring the alleged perpetrators to justice and, if found guilty, to punish them”.
UN experts also recommend that the French authorities “take measures to eliminate the structural and systemic causes of racial discrimination, including within the police”. They further call for “passing legislation that defines and prohibits racial profiling, and developing clear guidelines for law enforcement officials, particularly the police, that prohibit racial profiling. racism in police operations, discriminatory identity checks and other racist behaviour”.
The UN Committee reiterated its recommendation to the authorities to address as a matter of priority “the structural and systemic causes of racial discrimination, including in law enforcement, in particular in the police”, and “invites the French people to claim and exercise their human rights peacefully”.
The motorcyclist kept in detention
France has recently been the target of several independent warnings against “excessive use of force”, especially during the mobilizations on pensions or the riots following the death of Nahel. Paris has challenged each time their merits, judging in particular, yesterday, the remarks of the UN “excessive”.
On another level, nearly a hundred associations, unions and political parties classified on the left have called for “citizen marches”, planned yesterday across France, to express “mourning and anger” and denounce policies deemed “discriminatory against working-class neighborhoods. These organizations mobilized “for the maintenance of public and individual freedoms” demand “an in-depth reform of the police, of their intervention techniques and of their armament”.
A march also planned in the Paris suburbs, in memory of Adama Traoré, a young black man who died shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes in July 2016, was banned by the courts due to the context of violence. For its part, the investigating chamber of the Versailles Court of Appeal (France) decided last Thursday to keep the police officer responsible for the fatal shooting of Nahel in pre-trial detention.
This recording contradicted the first report of the intervention, which assured that the policeman was “in front of the vehicle” and that Nahel had “tried to leave by rushing on the official”, according to this summary. Traveling to Pau, President Emmanuel Macron promised to “continue to work” to respond to the difficulties of the neighborhoods, highlighted by these unprecedented riots since 2005, stressing that “the first response is order and calm, harmony”.
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