Macron Asks Parents, Social Media Firms to Help End Clashes

Jenny Che
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron called on parents and social media platforms to help bring an end to violence that has swept the country since the police killing of a 17-year-old and has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of young people.

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A third straight night of unrest Thursday after a teenager was shot in his car in a Paris suburb earlier this week led to damage to municipal buildings such as town halls and libraries in Marseille and the Seine-Saint-Denis area, north of Paris.

“A third of the arrests these past few nights concern young or sometimes very young people,” Macron said at a crisis meeting with top ministers on Friday. “It’s the responsibility of parents to keep them at home.”

The president said Snapchat, TikTok and several other platforms had been used to organize unrest and pointed to a “form of mimicry of violence.”

“Among the youngest ones, it leads to a sort of departure from reality, and we have the impression sometimes that some of them are living out the video games that have brainwashed them in the street,” Macron said.

Read More: These Are the French Cities Hit by Clashes Over Teen’s Killing

Authorities will work with platforms in the coming hours to have the most sensitive content removed, as well as to establish the identity of those using social media to call for violence, Macron said.

Some festive events and gatherings in tense areas were canceled ahead of further expected protests Friday night, and bus and tramway services across the country will be suspended from 9 p.m. The government is looking to restrict the sale of fireworks and flammable objects.

A concert by French pop singer Mylène Farmer at the 80,000-seat Stade de France stadium, just north of Paris, was also canceled, Agence France-Presse reported.

Street violence Thursday night resulted in attacks on 119 public buildings and 79 police stations, the Interior Ministry said. There were 875 arrests.

“What worries us is that rioters are determined to attack institutions under the republic, whether it’s town halls, nurseries, schools, civic centers or police stations,” Matthieu Valet, spokesman for the SICP police union, said in an interview with CNews Friday.

Twelve buses run by Paris-area transport operator RATP were incinerated in a depot on the outskirts of the capital. Some stores throughout the country were also vandalized overnight, including in central Paris.

Anger erupted after Nahel, 17, was fatally shot at close range in his car Tuesday in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris. Video posted on social media showed two police officers leaning into the car, with one of them shooting as the driver pulls away. Authorities haven’t released Nahel’s last name.

The officer who fired the shot was charged with murder and is being held in pre-trial detention. Pascal Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said Thursday that his office determined that the legal conditions for the use of a weapon were “not met.”

Laurent-Franck Lienard, a lawyer for the officer, told Europe 1 radio that the latter believed he “needed” to shoot.

Nahel’s mother, identified only as Mounia, said in an interview with France 5 that she did not blame the police.

“I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” she said. “He saw an Arab face, a little kid. He wanted to take his life.”

The unrest has echoes of riots that broke out for weeks in 2005 after two boys died in an electricity substation following a police chase, and has thrown a spotlight on French policing and long-simmering tensions in the country’s poorer suburbs. The government at the time declared a state of emergency that lasted close to two months.

--With assistance from Samy Adghirni.

(Updates with Macron comments and government measures throughout.)

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