France riots: Macron tells parents to keep teenagers at home; Marseille bans public demonstrations – latest updates
A total of 667 people arrested after violence and looting triggered by the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old on Tuesday
Emmanuel Macron says social media is fuelling copycat violence and tells parents to keep teenagers at home
Emmanuel Macron says social media is fuelling copycat violence in France and that state agencies would ask platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove the most “sensitive content”.
Speaking after a second government crisis meeting, the president said violence was being organised online. Commenting on the young people involved, he said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets of the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Macron also urged parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting, saying many of those arrested are young. “It is the parents’ responsibility to keep them at home, and therefore it is important for everyone’s peace of mind that parental responsibility can be fully exercised,” he said.
A man has died during rioting in French Guiana, an overseas département of France on the Caribbean coast of South America. The disturbances may be linked to events in France, le Monde reports. The newspaper said a link had not been definitively established but there had been heightened levels of instability in the area where the man died.
Le Monde says the victim was wounded in the neck by a gunshot at 11:40pm on Thursday. Police had withdrawn from the area, having faced opposition from about 50 people during the evening, and the man was found dead by paramedics shortly after midnight. Police suspect the man was hit by a stray bullet, the newspaper reports.
Emmanuel Macron says social media is fuelling copycat violence and tells parents to keep teenagers at home
Emmanuel Macron says social media is fuelling copycat violence in France and that state agencies would ask platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove the most “sensitive content”.
Speaking after a second government crisis meeting, the president said violence was being organised online. Commenting on the young people involved, he said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets of the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Macron also urged parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting, saying many of those arrested are young. “It is the parents’ responsibility to keep them at home, and therefore it is important for everyone’s peace of mind that parental responsibility can be fully exercised,” he said.
British tourists planning to travel to France have been warned of violent unrest and disruptions to road transport, including possible curfews, in official advice from the Foreign Office after nationwide protests over the fatal shooting of a teenager by French police.
The advice reads:Since 27 June, riots have taken place across France. Many have turned violent. Shops, public buildings and parked cars have been targeted. There may be disruptions to road travel and local transport provision may be reduced. Some local authorities may impose curfews. Locations and timing of riots are unpredictable. You should monitor the media, avoid areas where riots are taking place.
All trams and buses in Île-de-France – the region that includes Paris – are to be stopped after 9pm each evening until further notice, the local transport authority has announced.
⚠ En concertation avec la @prefpolice, tous les trams et bus en Île-de-France seront arrêtés au plus tard à 21h00.
— IDF Mobilités (@IDFmobilites) June 30, 2023
Cette mesure pour la sécurité des agents et des voyageurs, sera reconduite tous les soirs jusqu’à nouvel ordre.
Nous vous invitons à anticiper vos déplacements.
The organisation tweeted that the decision had been taken in consultation with police, and was in the interests of safety of both staff and passengers. It said the closures would reoccur each evening and warned people wishing to travel to plan ahead.
Violence has erupted across France, triggered by the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old by police on Tuesday. We would like to hear your thoughts on the unrest. How have you been affected?
The hard-pressed Parisian police were presented with a new security headache when a court in the city lifted a ban on a controversial Iranian opposition rally on Saturday that the police wanted stopped due to security risks.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), essentially the political wing of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), said the court had lifted a ban imposed by the Paris Prefectural Office, and that its rally would now go ahead. There are fears of street clashes between Iranian factions.
The court also ordered the prefecture to pay the organising committee of the demonstration a fine of €1,500 (£1,286). The court said it had made the decision after the organisers agreed it would be a static rally as opposed to a march and to increase the stewarding.
French police feared the NCRI event, due to be attended by some US Republicans and British Conservatives, could be targeted by the Iranian regime.
A previous rally in 2018 was targeted by an Iranian security services hit squad, but the sophisticated bomb plot was foiled, leading to one Iranian diplomat being jailed for 30 years by an Antwerp court.
Iran regards the MEK as a terrorist group and has waged a relentless war against the organisation, including assassinations and mass executions against the organisation inside and outside Iran. Some critics describe the MEK, which has a camp in Albania, as akin to a cult. Its designation as a terrorist group was lifted in the UK by 2008.
The NCRI claimed the court ruling was a “heavy blow to the clerical regime and the policy of appeasement”. It had previously claimed the ban had been imposed following a phone conversation between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi. France is one of a group of western powers investigating whether it can improve relations with Iran and revive a version of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The NCRI said: “Security being a ridiculous excuse, the reality was surrendering to blackmail by a regime that is the record-holder in executions and the godfather of international terrorism. The mullahs ruling Iran tried to involve foreign powers in suppressing the resistance. They received a worthy response from the Paris court.”
The MEK has, at times, been placed on European terrorist lists and faced security clampdowns.
The plot to bomb the 2018 NCRI rally in Paris led in 2021 to an Antwerp court jailing an Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi for 20 years. But in May this year he was controversially released in a prisoner swap between Belgium and Iran involving a jailed Belgian aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele.
The Belgian foreign minister, Hadja Lahbib, survived a parliamentary vote of no-confidence on Thursday over what was seen as a record of excessive leniency to the Iranian regime.
Marseille shuts down all public demonstrations
Marseille, France’s second-largest city, has decided to ban public demonstrations today, said the local authorities for the city. Reuters reports that all public transport in Marseille will also stop from 7pm local time (6pm BST).
According to le Monde, 875 people have been questioned overnight, including 408 in the Paris area, while 492 buildings were attacked, 2,000 vehicles burned and 3,880 fires set in public places across France.
The newspaper says the figures were given by the president, Emmanuel Macron, during a meeting at the prime minister’s official Paris residence Hôtel Matignon.
Moreover, Emmanuel Macron is prepared to adapt measures to curb the violence “without taboo”, an aide has told reporters. The president was said to be awaiting recommendations from government ministers, according to various reports.
Here’s a little more detail on those comments from Élisabeth Borne, who said the government is considering “all options”. She has told reporters who asked about the possible declaration of a state of emergency:
I won’t tell you now, but we are looking at all options, with one priority: restoring order throughout the country.
Both conservative and far-right opposition politicians have urged her to take such action, which would hand local authorities greater powers to declare localised curfews, ban demonstrations. It would also further empower the police in efforts to restrain suspected rioters and search homes, the French news agency Agence France-Presse reports.
Norway has advised its citizens to avoid large gatherings due to the rioting. Its foreign minister sent a text message to citizens in France, according to BFM TV. The broadcaster reports that France is a popular destination for Norwegian travellers, with about 270,000 of them visiting last year.
Meanwhile, Berlin has expressed a “certain concern at what is going on in France”, le Monde reports.
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France police shooting: violence erupts for a third consecutive night
Police fire teargas at rioters as 6,000 march through Nanterre to protest against shooting of 17-year-old
Violence has erupted for a third consecutive night in France as Emmanuel Macron struggles to contain mounting anger after the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy of north African descent during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
The officer concerned was charged with voluntary homicide on Thursday and placed in provisional detention in the capital as an estimated 6,000 people marched through the streets of Nanterre in memory of the teenager, identified as Nahel M.
Carrying placards reading “Justice for Nahel” and led by his mother, protesters chanted “No justice, no peace” and “Police kill”. While it began peacefully, the afternoon march descended into violence, with police firing teargas at masked youths.
Despite government appeals for calm and vows that order would be restored, smoke from burning cars, bins and a local bank branch later billowed over the suburb’s streets, while as the night advanced violent skirmishes between rioters and police also broke out in Lille, Toulouse, Marseille and Montpellier.
More than 100 people had been arrested on Thursday, according to interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who called for “support for our police, gendarmes and firefighters who are doing a brave job”.
In central Paris, Nike and Zara stores were vandalised and looted, Le Monde reported, with 14 arrests made. Further arrests were made after shop windows were smashed along the famous rue de Rivoli shopping street.
In Montreuil, an eastern suburb, hundreds of youths attacked shops including a pharmacy and a McDonalds, while bins were set on fire outside the town hall. Police fired teargas in response.
In the western city of Nantes, a car was driven into through the metal barriers of a Lidl store, which was subsequently also looted, Le Parisien reported.
In Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon, youths maintained a “constant and heavy barrage” of fireworks at police, local media reported, while a dozen cars were set alight in Sevran, north-east of Paris.
At least 10 people were arrested in two Brussels neighbourhoods after rioting that police blamed on the shooting.
Several towns around Paris, including Clamart, Compiègne and Neuilly-sur-Marne imposed full or partial night-time curfews as a police intelligence report leaked to French media predicted “widespread urban violence over the coming nights”.
Darmanin said 40,000 police would be deployed across France on Thursday, nearly four times as many as the previous night, including 5,000 in the greater Paris region where bus and tram services halted at 9pm. Several other towns shut public transport networks early for fear of violence.
The French president had held a morning crisis meeting with senior ministers after a second night of unrest and rioting across France in which public buildings were set on fire and cars torched in cities from Lille to Toulouse, as well as in the Paris suburbs.
“The last few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations but also schools and town halls, and thus institutions of the republic – and these scenes are wholly unjustifiable,” Macron said.
The government is haunted by the possibility of a repeat of the weeks of sustained violent protest sparked by the death of two young boys of African origin during a police chase in 2005.
That incident, in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris, triggered weeks of unrest with France declaring a state of national emergency as more than 9,000 vehicles and dozens of public buildings and businesses were set on fire.
Darmanin said 180 arrests had been made after Wednesday’s riots. “The response of the state must be extremely firm,” he said. Both he and the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, ruled out declaring a state of emergency for now.
On Thursday, Borne visited Garges-lès-Gonesse, north of Paris, where the mayor’s office was set on fire overnight amid rising public anger at police violence, particularly against young men from ethnic minorities, and allegations of systemic racism. . ."
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