[News] France’s Coronavirus lockdown exposes a two-tier system of policing in which violence against ethnic minorities is widespread

Anti-Imperialist News news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Apr 24 11:34:31 EDT 2020


https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200424-frances-coronavirus-lockdown-exposes-a-two-tier-system-of-policing-in-which-violence-against-ethnic-minorities-is-widespread/ 



  France’s Coronavirus lockdown exposes a two-tier system of policing in
  which violence against ethnic minorities is widespread

Nabila Ramdani - April 24, 2020
10-12 minutes
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ask anyone in France from an ethnic minority background when they first 
experienced a robust police document check and they will not say during 
the current coronavirus lockdown.

Most are brought up in the /banlieues/, on the fringes of major cities, 
on decrepit council estates where sinister state interference in 
day-to-day life remains the norm. Gratuitously violent restrictions on 
movement are all regularly deployed, and not just in times of crisis.

The kind of “controls” that we are now seeing during the health 
emergency start extremely early in life. You can always see people 
running away after the warning /“Keufs”/ – Verlan street slang for 
police officers – is shouted out in the /cités/.

The jargon is /contrôle au faciès/ – face control. Secular France is 
officially colour-blind, meaning that statistics about skin colour and 
racial or religious background are not compiled by officials. However, 
sociological studies routinely reveal scandalous discrimination against 
those with dark skin, who are stopped and brutalised the most.

Racial profiling is designed to demean – to create an underclass that is 
constantly under suspicion in a society full of extremely powerful 
bigots. At best, the checks are humiliating. At worst, they can and do 
end in a suspect being killed. This is why ethnic minority youths in 
particular try to get away.

*READ: Algeria reports number of landmine victims of French colonialism 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200409-algeria-reports-number-of-landmine-victims-of-french-colonialism/>*

All of this is worth considering at a time when the French authorities 
are imposing a minimum fine of €135 ($140) for anyone breaking the 
coronavirus lockdown. Those repeatedly caught without the 
right paperwork face six months in prison.

It is absolutely imperative that restrictions are enforced to stop the 
spread of the virus. If you have not got a valid reason for briefly 
leaving home – whether shopping for food or taking some exercise, for 
example – then you should not be exposing yourself, and potentially 
thousands of others, to COVID-19. That is why close to 14 million checks 
have been carried out so far.

Beyond such public health necessities, however, there is no excuse for 
the extreme discrimination that is going on in France right now. The 
repression that so many in the /banlieues/ have always known is 
worsening as the coronavirus crisis highlights the inadequacies of a 
society that is supposed to be grounded in the most idealistic 
principles imaginable. The French Republic is meant to protect “Freedom, 
Equality and Fraternity” but it is failing miserably.

This came into sharp focus this week when riot police were deployed on a 
number of estates in the northern suburbs of Paris after a motorcyclist 
from an Arab Muslim background was critically injured by the door of a 
patrol car which was allegedly swung open deliberately in front of him 
while he was travelling at high speed through Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

Officers denied any wrongdoing, but the trouble that followed 
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235307/Riots-break-suburbs-Paris-amid-anger-French-police-heavy-handedness-lockdown.html> 
there and in other /cités/ across France, led to a dozen of arrests 
including that of a French-Algerian journalist who was manhandled and 
handcuffed by police as he filmed them firing tear gas canisters 
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8239143/Second-night-riots-Paris-locals-react-fury-racist-police-attacks-lockdown.html> 
at youths who were aiming fireworks at them.

In one of the most gravely disturbing incidents of recent days, police 
in the southern town of Béziers are facing criminal charges including 
manslaughter following their arrest of a 33-year-old father of three on 
8 April.

Mohamed Gabsi, a Muslim from an Arab background, died in custody within 
an hour of being handcuffed and dragged into a patrol car. Apparently 
fit and healthy, Gabsi had lost consciousness during the trip to the 
police station after officers sat on his chest to restrain him, 
according to prosecutors.

Béziers, one of the most impoverished towns in France, has been 
described 
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/beziers-france-menard-le-pen/524931/> 
as a “Far Right Laboratory”. Its Mayor Robert Ménard – who is backed by 
the Rassemblement National, formerly the Front National – introduced a 
9pm-5am curfew, and called for it to be policed with maximum force.

The initial arrest of Gabsi was recorded, as was that of a 21-year-old 
Muslim of North African origin on an estate in Les Ulis, in suburban 
Paris. The routine was chillingly familiar – the boyish Sofiane was held 
down, his wrists were handcuffed, and he then began screaming for help 
in a high-pitched voice.

When officers became aware that they were being watched, they 
took Sofiane to a nearby doorway to rough him up further. Sofiane was 
pummelled with truncheons and punches as he lay on the floor.

A “Triangle” violation is then said to have taken place – the term 
describes an intrusive pat down in the groin area. It is a procedure 
that on occasions amounts to sexual abuse. Extreme versions have 
included police forcing their telescopic truncheons inside their 
victims, leading to complaints of rape.

An officer wearing a balaclava put his hand on Sofiane’s mouth to stifle 
his shouts, and it is alleged that Sofiane bit him. In turn, Sofiane 
also claims that another officer trampled on his chest and threatened to 
take him to “the forest to burn” him. The entire incident 
<https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20200327.OBS26701/confinement-un-jeune-homme-porte-plainte-pour-violences-policieres-lors-d-un-controle-en-essonne.html> 
is under criminal investigation.

Such abuse has been unrelenting. When the lockdown started in mid-March 
a whole squad of riot police was filmed pinning a black teenager on the 
floor in a Paris marketplace as her mother pleaded for mercy.

Another youth with the same racial profile was cilmed collapsing after 
being pushed by police during a /contrôle /in the north-east suburb of 
Aubervilliers. A suspect from an Arab background was cooperating fully 
before he was kicked in the groin, and a clash between police and 
residents on an estate in Chanteloup-les-Vignes, north-east of Paris, 
meanwhile led to a five-year-old girl being hit in the head 
<https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/736784/article/2020-04-06/yvelines-une-fillette-grievement-blessee-sa-mere-accuse-un-tir-de-lbd> 
by a rubber “defensive bullet” from a police flashball gun (/Lanceur de 
balles de défense/).

It was in Chanteloup-les-Vignes that “/La Haine”/ (Hate), the classic 
1995 movie focusing on discrimination against minorities was filmed. 
Ladj Ly’s “/Les Misérables”/, all about muscular policing in the 
suburbs, was this year nominated for an Oscar. There are very good 
reasons why artistic representations of the cheapness of life in 
the/banlieues /remain a key part of modern French culture.

Fines worth more than €120 million ($129.5 million) have been handed out 
to anyone caught on the street without the right documentation, and 
there is plenty to suggest that the poorest areas of France are being 
punished the hardest.

This applies to communities being decimated by the disease too. Stéphane 
Troussel, president of the General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, the 
chronically underfunded department north-east of Paris, said the 
population there was “poorer and more fragile with a weaker health 
system”, and that “inequality kills”.

*Algeria: 120 MPs to propose draft law on colonial crimes 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200319-algeria-120-mps-to-propose-draft-law-on-colonial-crimes/>*

Meanwhile, the notoriously reactionary Paris Police Prefect, Didier 
Lallement, has already blamed the sick for their own misfortune, saying: 
“Those who find themselves in intensive care today are those who, at the 
beginning of confinement, did not respect it.”

Lallement has, following Interior Ministry advice, apologised for the 
outburst, but it says everything about a force that – from day one – has 
handled the COVID-19 pandemic 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200311-who-describes-coronavirus-outbreak-as-pandemic/> 
as a crime emergency, rather than as a health one.

Other complaints against the police filed during the crisis are 
supported by photographs showing alleged victims with badly bruised 
faces and swollen eyes. The worst violence is said to take place inside 
police custody cells.

These kinds of attacks, which are aggravated by allegations of racial 
abuse, are institutionalised. They are a throwback to the days of French 
colonialism when a black African or Arab appearance was considered 
enough of an excuse for police brutality. This lingering reality has 
frequently persuaded tens of thousands to take to the streets to protest.

The last march I attended was in Paris in November last year when anger 
was high because a former Front National candidate had tried to burn 
down a mosque. Polls show that the party and its latest incarnation, 
the Rassemblement National, have always had massive support 
<https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/armee-militaires-et-gendarmes-plebiscitent-le-rassemblement-national-109007> 
among police 
<https://www.slate.fr/story/139493/policiers-militaires-vote-fn> and 
soldiers.

Such forces of law and order are now notable by their absence in the 
upmarket residential squares and boulevards of Paris. There are hardly 
any police checks, while the big estates in Seine-Saint-Denis, which 
have three times less intensive care places than the capital’s 
hospitals, are swarming with patrols carrying out bureaucratic checks on 
ethnic minority communities/. /

The great fear is that this two-tier system – during a time of high 
tension – will have disastrous consequences. It was a /contrôle au 
faciès /that led to three weeks of rioting across France in 
2005. The/ cités/ exploded after Zyed Benna, 15 and from a Tunisian 
background, and Bouna Traoré, 17 and from a family originally from Mali, 
died while hiding from police in an electricity sub-station in 
Clichy-sous-Bois, one of the most isolated of Paris’s suburbs. The 
innocent teenagers did not want to go through a /contrôle/ and ran away.

*Turkey: France can’t lecture us on genocide, history 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190413-turkey-france-cant-lecture-us-on-genocide-history/>*

/Cités/ dwellers then wanted to highlight the profound malaise at the 
heart of society, using a traditional method of gaining attention that 
goes back to the French Revolution and before. The anarchy that followed 
was so intense that a state of emergency was declared on 9 November 2005 
and curfews introduced.

Concern about social disorder 
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8161583/Red-Cross-chief-warns-coronavirus-pandemic-spark-social-unrest.html> 
is one of the reasons why 22 organisations, including Human Rights 
Watch, have called for an end to excessive police checks 
<https://www.justiceinitiative.org/newsroom/amid-covid-19-lockdown-justice-initiative-calls-for-end-to-excessive-police-checks-in-france> 
during the COVID-19 lockdown.

COVID-19 is already having a grave impact on the world in which we live. 
There are compelling comparisons to catalysts such as war and famine. 
Alterations to our economies, our politics and numerous other 
departments of life are guaranteed.

Social interactions – the way we relate to each other – are likely to 
undergo the biggest overhaul. In the case of the treatment of ethnic 
minorities in France, profound and radical change cannot come soon enough.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

-- 
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