How the death of Nahel Merzouk Has Left France in flames

The 17-year-old fatally shot by a police officer was an only child being raised by his mother in Nanterre, a Paris suburb.

Nahel Merzouk, 17, was a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent.

He was an only child being raised by his mother in Nanterre, a working-class suburb 15 minutes by commuter train from central Paris.

A lawyer representing his family told the French television program “C à Vous” that he had no criminal record. But Pascal Prache, the top prosecutor in Nanterre, said that the teenager had been known to the police for not complying with traffic stops and had been summoned to juvenile court in September for such an incident.

Mr. Merzouk was driving a yellow Mercedes AMG on Tuesday morning.  Mr. Prache told a news conference on Thursday that a search of the car did not find any “dangerous” material or illegal drugs.

Right- and leftwing politicians, social scientists, analysts and commentators have rushed to variously condemn, explain, exploit and justify the fury and violence that erupted in many French cities after Tuesday's fatal police shooting of Nahel Merzouk. But some of the most revealing and insightful testimony came from Kendra, a resident of the Pablo Picasso estate in the Nanterre suburb of Paris, near to where the teenager was killed during a traffic-stop. There have been 21 fatal police traffic-stop shootings since 2020. Most of the victims were of black or Arab origin.

Fighting the French system.

That police leaders feel justified in describing teenaged rioters as “vermin” and “savage hordes” is indicative of the dangerous, ever-widening gulf dividing France’s “haves” and “have-nots”.

Poverty, ghetto-like suburban estates, joblessness, limited life chances, and social alienation are problems facing younger people in France, not least in Europe. When chronic, unaddressed institutional racism in the justice system, in other state structures and in society at large is added to this volatile mix, it’s little wonder uncontained explosions occur.

What’s happening in France is a warning to the rest of the world. Although in Europe mostly France has been enveloped in the schism of the immigrants, the youth, and the state.

Le Monde reporter Luc Bronner has been covering the riots in France since last week.

He also got a chance to answer Le Monde reader’s questions on Monday in a live Q&A.‍

Reader 1: Why do you use the term "riots" and not revolts or other words of a similar political tone?‍

It's an important question because words shape collective perception. It's also a debate in which very valid opposing views can be voiced. For my part, I use the term "urban riots" in so far as we are witnessing outbreaks of violence targeting the cars of private individuals (who are inhabitants of the same neighborhoods), schools, libraries, police stations, shops, and town halls, without being able to assign any meaning to these various acts. Why attack a school?

Why burn down the supermarket? And so on… Riots can have a political dimension, of course. But the term "revolt" would imply that everything happening is political, and that's clearly not the case.

Reader 2:  Did you observe a feeling of "omnipotence," a conviction that they will be able to escape legal consequences, among the groups of young people you came across?

Yes, the feeling of omnipotence struck me. I've seen kids thrilled to stand up to the police, even elite police units. One mayor told me he'd seen graffiti reading: "We are the law." So, through this violence, there is a form of territorial takeover by groups of a few dozen to a few hundred young people in each public housing development.

The people I spoke to told me they were astonished to discover that adults had no control over these teenagers either. As for consequences, it's hard to say. In the end, there were a significant number of arrests: more than 3,000. It remains to be seen what the outcome will be from a judicial point of view.

Reader 3: Who could serve as a mediator with these young people, who are obviously very far removed from politics and for whom the notion of the Republic seems very abstract?

The primary mediators are, of course, parents. After that, all the intermediary bodies are essential: various organizations, MPs and mayors, business leaders, etc. However, What started as an uprising in the banlieues' high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state and opportunistic violence. The unrest, though, has not prompted the kind of government soul-searching on race which followed turmoil over similar incidents in other Western countries, such as Black Lives Matter protests in the United States or race riots at times in Britain.

Instead, the French government points to the underprivileged in low-income urban neighborhoods and juvenile delinquency, a reflection of the state's belief that citizens are united under a single French identity, regardless of race or ethnicity.