Chaos threatens to seize France, as shown by the new night of revolt, on Thursday, much more serious than the previous ones, with the multiplication of fires and looting throughout the country. The 45,000 police and gendarmes deployed, including elite units, were unable to control the spread of violence over such a vast geographical area.
Law enforcement tried to protect vital buildings, albeit with only partial success, and were unable to prevent looting because businesses are even more vulnerable. The feeling of helplessness was evident. According to the latest balance, 341 people were arrested, of which more than 80 in Marseille. The previous night the balance of arrests amounted to 875 people and 300 police officers were injured. The vehicles burned on public roads were about 2,000. There were at least 77 police premises attacked and 119 public buildings, such as schools, libraries and municipal facilities.
A 19-year-old boy died yesterday as a result of injuries sustained when he fell, on Wednesday night, from the roof of a shopping center near Rouen. The Prosecutor's Office is investigating the circumstances of the event.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, asked the prefects yesterday to order the tram and bus companies to stop working from nine o'clock at night. It was a kind of undeclared curfew. For the first time, the heaviest armored vehicles available to the National Gendarmerie took to the streets.
The head of Justice, Éric Dupont-Moretti, sent a circular to the courts in which he called for a "quick, firm and systematic" criminal response to urban violence committed by minors, with consequences for their parents.
Given the seriousness of the situation, President Emmanuel Macron, who was in Brussels to participate in the European Council, returned to Paris early to participate in a new crisis meeting with a small group of ministers at the Elysée. At the end of the meeting, the head of state considered "unacceptable" what France has experienced in recent nights. "Nothing justifies violence," he said, regretting that the death of the young Nahel in Nanterre had been "instrumentalized." "I appeal to all parents to responsibility," Macron continued, alluding to the involvement of many minors in the riots. The president advanced that he would ask that "the most sensitive content" be removed from social networks and spoke with concern about a phenomenon of "intoxication" of young people by social networks and a "mimicry of violence." He promised that more measures will be taken and more means will be used, but he did not mention the possibility of decreeing a state of emergency, as requested by the right.
Hours later, Marine Le Pen, former presidential candidate of the National Rally (RN, extreme right) asked Macron to receive her at the Élysée.
The acts of vandalism, actually committed by groups of young people between the ages of 14 and 18, affected a multitude of cities. One of the most serious was the burning of 12 buses, which were completely burned, in a parking lot belonging to the Paris urban transport company (RATP), in Aubervilliers, a suburb on the northern periphery. Former Prime Minister Jean Castex, who now runs the company, visited the site to learn about the damage. In Roubaix, near the Belgian border, several buildings burned. In the center of Paris, a large store of a multinational sporting goods store, located in the Les Halles shopping center, and another of the Spanish clothing giant, Zara, on Rivoli street, were looted. A group of ten soldiers from the Sentinelle anti-terrorist operation patrolled along that street yesterday at noon, in defensive formation, with automatic weapons in hand.
The material damage caused so far by the protests is counted in many millions of euros. The list of affected cities is long: Marseille, Lille, Besançon, Pau, Montauban, Rennes, Lyon, Toulouse, as well as numerous satellite towns of Paris.
The great concern of the Government is that the great crisis of the autumn of 2005, a revolt in the banlieues ('suburbs') that lasted for almost a month and that forced the declaration of a state of emergency, would be repeated. The trigger was then the death of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who were electrocuted in an electrical installation when they tried to escape a police control.
The mayor of Evry –the municipality that Manuel Valls directed for years, south of Paris–, Stéphane Baudet, emphasized yesterday, in an interview on the BFM-TV channel, that, compared to 2005, there are two substantial differences: the power of mobile phones and social networks, which accelerate events and often aggravate them, and the lack of a real political consensus between the parties to quell the revolt. Baudet was referring to the strength of radical options, be it the extreme right or the radical left. The first heats the air with its consistent anti-immigration message. The radical left, by contrast, minimizes violence and justifies it, while lashing out at the police.
There are sectors that criticize Macron for his first statements after the death of Nahel. Some reproach him for not respecting the separation of powers and the presumption of innocence of the police, and anticipating the conclusion of justice.
The president's attitude has exasperated some police unions. A note made public yesterday by the Alliance and UNSA unions provoked an acid response from the left-wing leaders Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Tondelier, who saw in the statement a "threat of sedition" and a "call for civil war." Both unions, which are in the majority, assured that it is necessary to "impose" against "these savage hordes", because "it is not enough to ask for calm." According to the note, the police "can no longer suffer the dictates of these violent minorities." “Today the policemen are in combat because we are at war – concluded the union text -. Tomorrow we will be in resistance and the Government must become aware”.
For Mélenchon and Tondelier, the tone of the statement is inadmissible. They interpreted it as "a thinly veiled threat of a fascist coup." "France has been a hostage for years to violent police lobbies that terrorize everyone, even the top of the State."
The atmosphere is so tense that two plainclothes policemen were attacked in Marseille. The two agents, who were traveling in a vehicle, were blocked by burning garbage containers. As they got out of the car, a group of about twenty individuals attacked them, after discovering that they were policemen. One suffered a traumatic eye and a knife cut to the wrist. The other had to be hospitalized for a head injury.
Collateral damage from the revolt has been the sharp worsening of air quality in the Paris region, due to the massive burning of vehicles and garbage containers. In both cases there is a lot of plastic that causes a very black and toxic dense smoke when ignited. The regional air quality observatory, Airparif, detected a significant concentration of fine particles, PM2.5 and P10, especially in the west and northeast. This pollution was added to that recently caused in this area of France by the effects, albeit milder, of forest fires in Canada.
