Unrest in France following the death on Tuesday of teenager Nahel, shot by a police officer, triggered a wave of concert cancellations and hotel reservations, while the government cut some public transport services.
In an extraordinary meeting, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, decided this Friday to extend to the entire country the restriction on the movement of buses and trams, which will not be able to operate after 9:00 p.m. local time (8:00 p.m.). . 00 in Lisbon) until the next morning. , until new notice.
The sale of rockets for fireworks, gasoline cans, acids and other chemical and flammable products was also temporarily prohibited.
The main employers’ union in the hotel and restaurant sector warned in a statement that a wave of cancellations of hotel reservations had been detected, in reaction to violence in the streets of the country.
France experienced a third consecutive night of serious riots in many parts of the territory, which resulted in at least 250 injured police officers, 875 arrests -a third of whom were minors-, 492 public buildings attacked and 2,000 vehicles set on fire.
To avoid this type of episode, the French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, announced this Friday the deployment of armored vehicles of the Republican Guard, without specifying how many.
The death of Nahel, who will be buried on Saturday in the city of Nanterre -where he lived and where he was assassinated-, shocked a large part of the country and provoked strong condemnation from the left and social movements, considering that it was an act of racism (he was of Algerian descent).
The Government, which also criticized the death of the young man at the hands of the police, asked that the main cultural and festive events in the country be canceled for security reasons.
Thus, the mega-concerts of the French-speaking singer Mylène Farmer scheduled at the Stade de France for the night of this Friday and Saturday will not take place and another great musical event, the FNAC Live Paris festival, will suffer the same fate.
Traditional summer parties at French schools in the busy Paris region have also been postponed or cancelled. In Marseille, the authorities prohibited this Friday night any type of protest demonstration in the center of the city.
The French Executive wants at all costs to avoid a repetition, with the death of Nahel, of the acts of vandalism whose images went around the world at the end of 2005, when a wave of violence broke out due to the death of two adolescents electrocuted when fleeing of the police in a Parisian suburb.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has ruled out for the moment the idea of declaring a state of emergency, considered the violent acts “unjustifiable” and asked parents “responsibility” so that their children do not participate in the riots.
Macron justified this appeal by pointing out that a third of those arrested in the riots are minors. In parallel, he urged social media platforms to take their share of responsibility and help identify rioters or those who advocate violence.
In this sense, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Digital Transition, Jean-Noël Barrot, called this afternoon representatives of social networks such as Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok, among others.
Source: TSF
