France protests demand end to structural racism in police force, says activist

ISTANBUL

Ending structural racism is a major demand of demonstrators in France protesting the killing of a teenager of North African descent by police last week, an activist told Anadolu on Wednesday.

"The emotion felt by Nahel's death triggers a sense of abandonment and contempt for many who suffer various forms of social humiliation," said Rasheed Tamrawi, a member of the Collective for Countering Islamophobia in Europe.

Nahel M., a 17-year-old of Algerian descent, was shot at point-blank range on June 27 by a police officer last week in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Protests have since swept France after the fatal shooting of the teenager during a traffic check.

The officer faces a formal investigation for voluntary homicide and has been placed in preliminary detention.

According to Tamrawi, Nahel's killing was a racist act, rather than an anti-Muslim one. "The terms Muslim, Arab, immigrant, and refugee can be used interchangeably," he said.

The anger driving the protests is fueled by "the idea that riots are the only way to make their voices heard. If the authorities do not criminalize structural racism in the police force, the demonstrators will take it upon themselves to make this fact known," he said.

"People see Nahel as a brother, a son, a friend," he added, pointing out that his killing triggered protests in cities across France, as well as in other European countries such as Belgium and Switzerland.

"The regular impunity of the police, the refusal of the authorities to recognize the problem of structural racism in the police despite the various condemnations from international organizations, the criminalization of young people from the ghettos, the brutality of a government that remains deaf to the demands of the French and blind to the precariousness (of their situation) are the main political reasons being invoked," he said.

After starting in Nanterre, the protests quickly spread to other cities, including Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, and Marseille.

*Writing by Alperen Aktas