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href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200424-frances-coronavirus-lockdown-exposes-a-two-tier-system-of-policing-in-which-violence-against-ethnic-minorities-is-widespread/">https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200424-frances-coronavirus-lockdown-exposes-a-two-tier-system-of-policing-in-which-violence-against-ethnic-minorities-is-widespread/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">France’s Coronavirus lockdown exposes a
two-tier system of policing in which violence against ethnic
minorities is widespread</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Nabila Ramdani - April 24,
2020<br>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">10-12 minutes</div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>Most are brought up in the <em>banlieues</em>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>“Keufs”</em> –
Verlan street slang for police officers – is shouted out
in the <em>cités</em>.</p>
<p>The jargon is <em>contrôle au faciès</em> – 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200409-algeria-reports-number-of-landmine-victims-of-french-colonialism/">Algeria
reports number of landmine victims of French
colonialism </a></strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>banlieues</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Officers denied any wrongdoing, but the <a
href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235307/Riots-break-suburbs-Paris-amid-anger-French-police-heavy-handedness-lockdown.html"
target="_blank">trouble that followed</a> there and in
other <em>cités</em> 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
<a
href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8239143/Second-night-riots-Paris-locals-react-fury-racist-police-attacks-lockdown.html"
target="_blank">them firing tear gas canisters</a> at
youths who were aiming fireworks at them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Béziers, one of the most impoverished towns in
France, has been <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/beziers-france-menard-le-pen/524931/"
target="_blank">described</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20200327.OBS26701/confinement-un-jeune-homme-porte-plainte-pour-violences-policieres-lors-d-un-controle-en-essonne.html"
target="_blank">entire incident</a> is under criminal
investigation.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Another youth with the same racial profile was cilmed
collapsing after being pushed by police during a <em>contrôle </em>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 <a
href="https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/736784/article/2020-04-06/yvelines-une-fillette-grievement-blessee-sa-mere-accuse-un-tir-de-lbd"
target="_blank">hit in the head</a> by a rubber
“defensive bullet” from a police flashball gun (<em>Lanceur
de balles de défense</em>).</p>
<p>It was in Chanteloup-les-Vignes that “<em>La Haine”</em> (Hate),
the classic 1995 movie focusing on discrimination
against minorities was filmed. Ladj Ly’s “<em>Les
Misérables”</em>, 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<em> banlieues </em>remain a
key part of modern French culture.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p><strong><a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200319-algeria-120-mps-to-propose-draft-law-on-colonial-crimes/">Algeria:
120 MPs to propose draft law on colonial crimes </a></strong></p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200311-who-describes-coronavirus-outbreak-as-pandemic/">pandemic</a>
as a crime emergency, rather than as a health one.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/armee-militaires-et-gendarmes-plebiscitent-le-rassemblement-national-109007"
target="_blank">massive support</a> among <a
href="https://www.slate.fr/story/139493/policiers-militaires-vote-fn"
target="_blank">police</a> and soldiers.</p>
<p>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<em>. </em></p>
<p>The great fear is that this two-tier system – during a
time of high tension – will have disastrous
consequences. It was a <em>contrôle au faciès </em>that
led to three weeks of rioting across France in 2005. The<em> cités</em> 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 <em>contrôle</em> and ran away.</p>
<p><strong><a
href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190413-turkey-france-cant-lecture-us-on-genocide-history/">Turkey:
France can’t lecture us on genocide, history </a></strong></p>
<p><em>Cités</em> 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.</p>
<p>Concern about <a
href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8161583/Red-Cross-chief-warns-coronavirus-pandemic-spark-social-unrest.html"
target="_blank">social disorder</a> is one of the
reasons why 22 organisations, including Human Rights
Watch, have <a
href="https://www.justiceinitiative.org/newsroom/amid-covid-19-lockdown-justice-initiative-calls-for-end-to-excessive-police-checks-in-france"
target="_blank">called for an end to excessive police
checks</a> during the COVID-19 lockdown.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the
author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial
policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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