In Nahel M., a stranger killed by the police, French demonstrators see friend and family
They called him their son, their brother, their friend, and they came by the thousands to mourn, vent, and rebel.
Most of the protesters who gathered on Thursday for a vigil for a 17-year-old from the Parisian suburbs who had been shot and killed was not yet known by a police officer earlier this week.
It just felt like they had.
In the life and death of Nahel M. – the only name by which the young man has been publicly identified – they saw their own plight as French Algerians, French Moroccans, French Muslims and Black French living for a majority in minority-dominated enclaves lived. and white country that claims to see no color differences.
Like her, Nahel was a French citizen of North African descent, in his case Moroccan and Algerian.
“Nahel could have been my brother — my brother is 17,” said Syrine Djidi, a 19-year-old associate professor of literature, walking into the crowd that swelled under the midday heat and filled the streets of Nanterre, where the teen was killed on Tuesday.
Mrs. Djidi was a stranger to Nahel’s family, but felt compelled to make the train journey from a suburb on the other side of Paris to show her support for his mother – and her anger at the system. She has dual French Algerian citizenship and wore a hijab and a light blue abaya.
To her, Nahel’s story could be easily told.
“He was a non-white person in this country,” Ms Djidi said. “Non-white people are targeted by the police.”
No evidence has yet emerged that Nahel was singled out because of his race. And this particular case has played out a little differently than previous episodes of police brutality.
Initial accounts provided to the French news media by what were described as anonymous police sources claimed that Nahel had been shot after attempting to drive his car into officers who had stopped him on a street in Nanterre. But soon French officials began to condemn the officer’s actions after a video showed the young man was shot as he tried to drive away.
And on Thursday, the officer who shot him was held on charges of voluntary manslaughter – a rarity for French police officers.
The shooting has nevertheless revived an all-too-familiar conversation about race, power and identity that has been burning in France for decades, especially since 2005, when two teenagers on the run from the police were electrocuted after hiding in an electrical substation. Their deaths began weeks of some of the worst riots in the country’s history, drawing attention to racial divides.
Angry police unions this week denounced the police officer’s detention, arguing that authorities gave in to the protesters to try and end the riots. But while French officials have urged calm and flooded the streets with police officers, it was not clear what effect the decision to remove the officer, whose race was not known, might have.
Many protesters said the video changed everything. Shot by a bystander, it showed the officer firing at close range through the window of a canary yellow Mercedes, as the car sped away from him.
“The difference this time: someone was filming,” said Kader Mahjoubi, 47, who drove 50 miles to Nanterre to attend the vigil.
In recent years, studies have highlighted just how widespread racial discrimination is in France.
2017, an investigation by France’s civil liberties ombudsman, the Défenseur des Droits, found that “young men perceived as black or Arab” were 20 times more likely to be subject to police identity checks than the rest of the population.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, started two years ago a class action against the government claiming that it had failed to address the issue of police racial profiling. The problem, it said, is “deeply rooted in the police.”
But speaking openly about race is generally taboo in France, a country based on the color-blind ideal that all people have the same universal rights and should be treated equally. In most cases, it is illegal to compile racial statistics in the country.
In Nanterre, however, racing was on everyone’s mind.
Mr Mahjoubi, the demonstrator, said he too had experienced being stopped by police during traffic checks. Sometimes people run away from fear, he said. He was born in France, but because of his Moroccan heritage, he often felt treated like a foreigner, he said.
“I’m afraid for my children,” he said. “I’m not worried about robbers. I’m worried the Republic is coming for them.’
In previous cases of police misconduct allegations, court proceedings dragged on for years and convictions of police officers are uncommon.
This time, a prosecutor was quick to say that the officer had no legal grounds to open fire. The prosecution also said that a search of the car Nahel was driving found no dangerous materials or illegal drugs. However, the teenager was known to the police because of previous incidents where he had failed to comply with police traffic checks.
Quick as the official response was, it was not enough to calm the worried hearts and clenched jaws in the streets of Nanterre.
“The land will keep burning until we get justice,” said Sonia Benyoun, 33, as she walked with a group of local mothers who knew Nahel from their neighborhood.
The night before, Mrs. Benyoun—who like other family acquaintances described Nahel as a kind young man who was kind to his mother—had seen her block turn into a “war zone.” Cars were burned, bus shelters were destroyed. The sight hurt her heart, she said. But she saw it as necessary to make a point – one that could finally be heard.
“We have the impression that nothing is changing,” said Ms. Benyoun, a secretary.
The anger was palpable.
“Everyone hates the police,” they chanted. “We don’t forget, we don’t forgive.”
Nahel’s mother, Mounia, led the procession from the cab of a flatbed truck, wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Justice for Nahel” and the date of his death. At one point, as the procession reached Nanterre’s local courthouse, she held up a red torch amidst a sea of people chanting the name of her only child.
Waves of tear gas were already pouring down from the nearby square where Nahel was killed. Phalanxes of riot police officers would soon clash with demonstrators. The country’s stalwart interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, had announced earlier in the day that he would send 40,000 officers to the streets – more than four times as many as the night before. Shortly before midnight, the government announced that more than 100 more people had been arrested on Thursday.
On a Nanterre sidewalk, near the courthouse, stood an elderly white man in a suit jacket, a cane in one hand. His name was Philippe Dockès and he had traveled from Paris to mourn a man he did not know because of a video made by another person he did not know.
Mr Dockès did not see himself as a protester, but simply as an engaged citizen.
“It’s up to the citizens to hold our institutions and the police accountable,” he said before cautiously trying to walk back to the train station.
Aureline Breeden and Juliette Gueron-Gabrielle contributed reports from Paris.