Unrest in France after the death on Tuesday of teenager Nahel, shot by a police officer, sparked a wave of cancellations of concerts and hotel reservations, while the government cut some public transport services.
At an extraordinary meeting, the French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, decided this Friday to extend the restriction on the movement of buses and trams to the whole country, which will no longer be able to run from 9 p.m. local time (8 p.m.) . 00 in Lisbon) until the next morning, until further notice.
The sale of rockets for fireworks, cans of gasoline, acids and other chemical and flammable products was also temporarily banned.
The main employers’ union in the hospitality industry (UMIH) warned in a statement that a wave of cancellations of reservations in hotels was observed in response to the violence in the streets of the country.
France experienced serious disturbances in large parts of the territory for the third consecutive night, resulting in at least 250 police officers injured, 875 arrests – one third of them minors -, 492 public buildings attacked and 2,000 vehicles set on fire.
To prevent episodes like this, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced this Friday the deployment of Republican Guard armored vehicles, 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 killed – shocked much of the country and provoked energetic condemnation from the left and from social movements, given that it was an act of racism (he was of Algerian descent).
The government, which also criticized the young man’s death at the hands of the police, asked for major cultural and festive events in the country to be canceled for security reasons.
For example, the mega concerts of the French-speaking singer Mylène Farmer scheduled for the Stade de France, this Friday and Saturday evening, will not take place and another major musical event, the FNAC Live Paris festival, will have the same luck.
Traditional summer parties at French schools in the busy Paris region have also been postponed or cancelled. In Marseille, authorities banned any form of protest demonstration in the city center on Friday night.
The French executive wants to avoid at all costs the repetition, with the death of Nahel, of the acts of vandalism, the images of which swept the world at the end of 2005, when a wave of violence broke out over the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted while fleeing the police in a Parisian suburb.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has ruled out the idea of declaring a state of emergency for the time being, deemed the violent actions “unjustifiable” and asked parents for “responsibility” so that their children do not participate in the disturbances.
Macron justified such an appeal noting that a third of those arrested in the riots are minors. At the same time, he urged the platforms that run social networks to take their share of responsibility and help identify rioters or perpetrators of violence.
In this respect, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Digital Transition, Jean-Noël Barrot, This Friday afternoon, representatives of Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok, among others, were called for a meeting.
Source: DN
