Unrest in France following the death last Tuesday of the teenager Nahel by the shooting of a police officer has led to a wave of cancellations of concerts and hotel reservations, while the government has cut certain public transport services. In an extraordinary meeting, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has decided today to extend to the entire country the restriction on the movement of buses and trams, which will not be able to operate from 9:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. GMT) until the following morning until new order.
The sale of mortars for launching fireworks, gasoline cans, acids and other flammable and chemical products has also been temporarily prohibited. The main hotel and restaurant employers’ union (UMIH) has warned in a statement that a wave of cancellations has been detected in hotel reservations in reaction to the altercations.
France has experienced a third consecutive night of serious disorders in many parts of the territory, with a balance of at least 250 injured agents, 875 arrests -a third minor-; 492 public buildings attacked and 2,000 vehicles set on fire. To avoid this type of episode, the French Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, announced today the deployment of armored vehicles from the Gendarmerie, without specifying how many.
The death of Nahel, who will be buried tomorrow in the city of Nanterre -where he lived and where he died-, has shocked a good part of the country and has provoked strong condemnation from the left and from social movements, considering it an act of racism (it was of Algerian descent).
The Executive, who has also repudiated the death of the young man, has asked that the great cultural and festive events in the country be cancelled. The French-speaking singer Mylène Farmer’s mega-concerts scheduled at the Stade de France tonight and tomorrow will not take place. Another great musical event, the FNAC Live Paris festival, will suffer the same fate. Traditional French school summer parties (Kermesses) in the populous Paris region have also been postponed or cancelled. In Marseille, the authorities have prohibited any type of demonstration in the center of the city tonight.
The French government wants to avoid at all costs a repetition with the death of Nahel of the acts of vandalism that went around half the world at the end of 2005, when a wave of violence broke out after two teenagers who were fleeing from the police lost their lives electrocuted on the Parisian outskirts. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has ruled out decreeing a state of emergency for the moment, has considered the violent acts “unjustifiable” and has asked parents for “responsibility” so that their children do not participate in the riots. Macron has justified this appeal by noting that a third of the people arrested in the riots are minors. In parallel, he has urged the platforms that manage social networks to assume their share of responsibility and help identify the organizers of riots or those who advocate violence.
In this sense, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Digital Transition and Telecommunications, Jean-Noël Barrot, have summoned the representatives of Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok, among other networks, this afternoon.