france Archives - Black Lives Matter

Racist French police and Macron turning France into a security state

Ça s'est passé samedi à Paris. 15 minutes de coups et d'insultes racistes.

La folle scène de violences policières que nous révélons est tout simplement inouie et édifiante.

Il faut la regarder jusqu'au bout pour mesurer toute l'ampleur du problème. pic.twitter.com/vV00dOtmsg
— Loopsider (@Loopsidernews) November 26, 2020

The tweet reads (Google Translates):

It happened on Saturday in Paris. 15 minutes of racist beatings and insults. The crazy scene of police violence that we reveal is simply amazing and uplifting. We have to watch it to the end to understand the full extent of the problem.

Thanks to Loopsider

Macron, with fascist Le Pen breathing down his neck – has launched a war against Muslims in the country, as well as giving the police a green light to step up their already rampant racist violence.

And it’s not just minorities that the police hate.

The Yellow Vest protest movement was subject to regular attacks by the police, as have school students on recent protests outside their schools when they protested about the government’s failure to provide personal protective equipment to schools and other public health resources.

On 23 November this was France’s finest in action on the outskirts of Paris attacking defenceless and destitute refugees:

French police forcefully dismantled a migrant camp in Paris and used tear gas to drive away the inhabitants.

This comes just one week after authorities overturned a camp holding hundreds of refugees and migrants near a French stadium in the capital pic.twitter.com/x1JNtW6Z8f
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 24, 2020

And below is some more racist French police violence from the suburbs of Paris.

The police are torturing this man for fun because he broke the lockdown by going out to get food. Meanwhile all the well-heeled middle classes and rich people had left Paris for their second homes in the countryside:

Video: Police are terrorising resident in Paris suburbs

WARNING – SHOCKING CONTENT: In the Paris suburb of Les Ulis residents were able to film this shocking footage of a man being taken to an underpass and beaten and tortured by police.

This reign of terror is happening throughout the suburbs every single day of the lockdown.

France’s notoriously racist police force is stuffed full of fascists from the Front Nationale (or whatever Le Pen calls her thugs now). They are harassing, brutalising, humiliating and terrorising the community.

There will be an explosion of resistance. As if this is not enough – a hugely disproportionate number from the ethnic minorities are dying as a result of Covid-19 infection because of the inequalities of overcrowded living conditions and poor health due to poverty.

It is estimated as much as a quarter of the Paris population has fled to second homes in the countryside. This is not an option for most working-class people and those French people from an African or Arab background.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times. The European press has so far ignored the oppressive situation in the Parisian suburbs.

“We’ve got a lot of young people in big families, shut up in tiny apartments, and it’s difficult to close them up like that,” said Bilal Chikri, a filmmaker who lives in the neighbourhood. “There’s a lot of clashes with the police, lots of police missteps, lots of abuse of power.”
The approach has left residents vulnerable to both the police and the virus. Paris had 732 virus deaths compared with 402 in Seine-Saint-Denis as of April 8, but the city has half again the population of the suburb, where many of the metropolis’s cashiers, deliverymen, transit workers, nurses and couriers live.
“This is getting really tough,” said Larry Karache, an out-of-work shopkeeper, standing outside Chêne Pointu, the housing project where France’s 2005 urban riots were born, and which was depicted in last year’s hit film “Les Miserables.” “We’re actually in prison here.”
The New York Times reports (10 April 2020)

Racist police in the US, Europe, the UK and elsewhere, are using the lockdown as an excuse to unleash a wave of racist violence against minorities. This is happening in addition when these communities are being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 with death rates running at twice that for white people. This is due to the discrimination and poverty faced by many for generations.

These same communities are disproportionately to be found on the frontline of the fight against Covid – from delivery drivers to cleaners and nurses. In the UK the first 10 doctors to die were all from ethnic minority background and mostly Muslims. Stand up. Fight back!Racist police in the US, Europe, the UK and elsewhere, are using the lockdown as an excuse to unleash a wave of racist violence against minorities.

This is happening in addition when these communities are being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 with death rates running at twice that for white people. This is due to the discrimination and poverty faced by many for generations.