By Kitty Kelly-Epstein

Reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter protests over police killings of unarmed citizens in the U.S., France has been in the throes of national unrest in the wake of the police slaying of Nahel Merzouk in a Parisian suburb on June 27.

The police killing of Nahel, a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent who lived in Naterre, one of France’s mostly Black and Brown cities, has led to days of protest all over France. Merzouk was shot in the chest at point-blank range at a traffic stop.

Merzouk’s slaying became a rallying cry among minority youth in France in much the same way that George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had in 2020.

“We don’t forget, we don’t forgive,” crowds in Naanterre chanted as they denounced Merzouk’s slaying.

French President Emanuel Macron said the shooting death was “inexcusable and unforgiveable,” a rare response from authorities.

Two policemen on motorcycles chased Merzouk last Tuesday when they saw him driving a yellow Mercedes through bus lanes and didn’t stop until traffic blocked his progress.

The policeman who shot Merzouk initially reported that he had feared for his and his partner’s life, presenting as if the driver was going to run them over.

But the story changed when video of the incident and witness statements fully contradicted the policeman’s assertions: Merzouk was shot at point-blank range at the driver’s side window and the video recorded a threat to shoot the victim.

“You are going to get a bullet in the head,” a voice is heard saying in the video, National Public Radio reported. And as the car moves forward, a single shot is heard.

On June 29, the officer was taken into custody where prosecutors have announced a preliminary charge of voluntary manslaughter. The officer has also apologized to the youth’s family.

Merzouk was an only child, studying to be an electrician, and in the words of his mother, “My best friend.”

After two days of unrest in the French cities of Amiens, Annecy, Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Pau, Roubaix, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse, Tourcoing, Merzouk’s grandmother called for calm but the expression of outrage against police continued.

Some stores were looted, garbage cans and trucks and cars set on fire, with damages countrywide amounting to $1 billion.

More than 3,600 people have been detained in the country, most of them young Black and Brown youth like Nahel, whose funeral was July 1.

The response to the young people’s rebellion by agents of the French government has been the expression of more racism.

Two police unions issued a joint statement calling people in Black and Brown neighborhoods “vermin.”  In one suburb, a Right-wing deputy has demanded to change the name of the “Angela Davis School,” because she supported the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab or veil.

A fundraising page for the officer showed that 85,000 people donated a total of $1.7 million, while 21,000 made $450,000 for Merzouk.

And French protesters are already being sentenced in an “expedited process.”  One 58-year-old man was sentenced to a year in prison for picking up items off the pavement three hours after a store was looted. By comparison, during the same month a white man who sexually abused his granddaughters received a suspended sentence and no jail time.

Many in France’s Black and Brown communities are descendants of people from the French colonies who were encouraged to move to France to rebuild the country after World War II.

Like Black and Brown communities in the U.S. they are exploited for their labor and rejected when it comes to France’s famed “egalite” and “fraternite.”

France’s progressive parties support the issues of the protesters.

Danielle Obono is one representative of that coalition, NUPES.    (https://www.facebook.com/DeputeeObono.) Another source of information are Dr. Crystal Fleming’s tweets in French and English on these topics https://twitter.com/alwaystheself.

When George Floyd was murdered by U.S. police thousands of French people also protested.

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