France: ¡In Nanterre, the police keep killing!
nte the murder of the young Nahel M. by the french police, We reproduce the statement of the revolutionary wing of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), in which our colleagues from the LIS France are active[1].
At 8 Tuesday morning 27 of June, two police officers shot and killed a young man 17 years behind the wheel of his car in Nanterre. In a video broadcast on social networks, Two police officers on a motorcycle are heard ordering the driver to open the car door, one of them pointing a gun at the driver's head and shouting: "Open up or I'll put a bullet in your head."!” We then see how the car moves forward and the policeman shoots the young man at point-blank range., even though he didn't feel threatened at all by the vehicle's path. Once again, The police have murdered a young man from the suburbs of North African origin under the pretext of “resisting arrest”.
No, It wasn't an “accident.”
Police allege “self-defense”: the car allegedly rammed into them, what the video denies. The extreme right, faithful ally of this system, adds his racist ideas to the police lies, calling the victim aoffender, because he comes from a working-class neighborhood…
These images would be unimaginable in rich neighborhoods. Racism and anti-poor and anti-worker hatred are exacerbated in the police, that wages a real war against the poor of the working-class neighborhoods. Your “mistakes”, “accidents” and “self-defense” are the result: Arbitrary controls and police violence kill workers and the poor, who are usually young, blacks and maghrebs.
The number of police victims has been increasing since a law 2017 facilitated the use of firearms in case of refusal to obey. Macron and Darmanin's police believe they can do anything, even murder!
An investigation has been opened for“voluntary homicide committed by a person in a position of public authority”, entrusted to the IGPN[2]. A police force famous for its inaction... and its determination to cover up its agents. In 2022, only five of the thirteen deaths due to “refusal to obey” led to the indictment of police officers. The others were dismissed. And what can we expect from justice when the police crimes of Adama Traoré, Lamine Dieng, Ibrahima Bah and many others have gone unpunished?
Without justice there is no peace
Clashes broke out during the night, first in Nanterre and the surrounding working-class neighborhoods of Suresnes, Gennevilliers, Colombes and Asnières, and then in other cities like Mantes-la-Jolie, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Bordeaux and Roubaix.
The revolt is legitimate and must be expressed and deepened. It is a sector of the working people, one of its most precarious sectors, the one who is especially in the spotlight and the one who reacts today. Macron and his ministers call for “calm”. They do not say a word about the daily violence against young people in their neighborhoods. Unlike, Police respond to anger with arrests and beatings, and Darmanin deploys gendarme reinforcements.
The NPA does not call for calm: without justice there is no peace. We must express our legitimate anger for truth and justice, against the police that kill, against their government sponsors and against all those who stoke racist hatred.
Despite all the talk aboutrepublicanism, the role of the police is repression. Repression of social movements, exacerbated in recent years under Hollande's orders, Valls, Cazeneuve, Macron and Darmanin. Repression of the Yellow Vests, of the labor movement against the reform of the retirement system, of the Verbaudet strikers, of the environmental and migrant movements…
The NPA calls on all demonstrations to denounce this new murder. Calls on workers and young people to gather in their workplaces, study and in their neighborhoods to decide how to express this legitimate anger and push back those responsible for this increasingly violent repression in the service of an unequal social order.
28 June 2023
[1] https://nouveaupartianticapitaliste.fr/communique-du-npa-a-nanterre-la-police-tue-toujours/
[2] General Inspection of the National Police.
