Macron cancels German visit amid unrest; 1,311 arrested for rioting after police killed teen

Rioting raged in cities around France for a fourth night despite a huge police deployment and 1,311 arrests, with cars and buildings set ablaze and stores looted, as family and friends prepared Saturday to bury the 17-year-old whose killing by police unleashed the unrest. France’s Interior Ministry announced the new figure for arrests around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell days of violence that was triggered after the teen’s death on Tuesday.

Despite an appeal to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on. 

About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.

Rituals to bid farewell to the teen, identified only as Nahel, who was killed in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, began on Saturday with a viewing of the open coffin by family and friends.

Later, the coffin was to be brought to a mosque for a ceremony, then to a Nanterre cemetery for burial.

As the number of arrests continued to mount, the government suggested the violence was beginning to lessen thanks to tougher security measures. 

Since the unrest began on Tuesday night, police have made a total of 2,400 arrests — more than half of those in the fourth night of violence.

Still, the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far away, 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, but 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 neighbourhoods around France where many residents trace their roots to former French colonies — like where Nahel grew up.

“Nahel’s story is the lighter that turned on 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 stands 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 neighbourhoods where the anger is rooted — pleaded for an end to the violence.

“Many of us are from working-class neighbourhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of Nahel, the players said in a statement. 

“Violence resolves nothing.” Instead, the players said, it’s time for “mourning, dialogue and reconstruction.” 

Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer, 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. 

The family has roots in Algeria.

Early Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets.

In the neighbouring suburb 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 vandalised in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of the roughly 30 arrests made were for theft, police said. 

Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorised protest drew more than 1,000 people earlier Friday evening.

With fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than on the previous night, according to the Interior Ministry, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin claimed the violence was of “much less intensity.” 

There has been brazen daylight violence, too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg on Friday. That same day windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall.

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.

Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from vacation.

The rioting puts new pressure on Macron, who blamed social media for fueling violence.

Macron postpones visit to Germany

Macron postponed a state visit to Germany because of the unrest in his country, the German president’s office. 

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Macron requested the postponement in a telephone conversation on Saturday. 

It said that Steinmeier “regrets the cancelation and has the fullest understanding in view of the situation in our neighbouring country.” 

It said that the aim is for the visit to go ahead as soon as possible, but gave no date. Macron’s state visit, the first by a French president to Germany in 23 years, was supposed to take him to

Ludwigsburg, Berlin and Dresden on Monday and Tuesday. 

There wasn’t immediate comment from French officials.

The cancellation is a clear sign of the gravity of France’s unrest, given the importance of the French-German relationship. 

This is the second time in a few months that unrest in France has hurt Macron diplomatically, after King Charles III cancelled his first foreign visit as UK monarch, initially planned for France, because of pension reform protests.

Darmanin ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown Friday 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 identifying people inciting violence.

Macron, too, zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched. 

Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organise unrest and served as conduits for copycat 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 Olympic Games, whose organisers were closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the competition continue.

The police officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. 

Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing, but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.

Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.

Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colourblind universalism. 

In the wake of Nahel’s killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behaviour.

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.