After the death of unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of three police officers in May in Minneapolis, the Black Lives Matter movement has resurged and swept the globe. The fraught relationship between the police and people of colour- and especially the black community- sparked the movement’s founding back in 2013 and has often incorrectly been labelled as a uniquely American problem. However, the wave of protests which have been taking place across France since Floyd’s death has highlighted that the issue of an institutionally racist police force resonates similarly strongly among the French POC community.
Police brutality has long been problematic in France. Its police are among the most heavily armed in Europe, and accordingly, France has one of the highest rates of citizens who die annually as a result of police brutality. However, this brutality has moved into the mainstream only recently, after police responded extremely violently to the nationwide “Gilets Jaunes” movement last year. Whilst attending protests- or even due to being in proximity to protest sites- members of the public have been killed or seriously injured as a result of police methods, which include the infamous “flash-ball” (a canon-like device to disperse crowds) and tear gas grenades. However, as French people of colour know, police brutality is nothing new. It remains deeply problematic that mainstream French society has only acknowledged police brutality since the well-publicised violations against white Gilets Jaunes protesters, whilst people of colour have been protesting about the violations committed against them by police for decades.
The resulting tensions between police and French people of colour are particularly stark in the banlieues, suburbs segregated from French cities which were built for France’s new immigrant populations largely from North and West Africa and parts of Asia and described by former Prime Minister Manuel Valls as France’s “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid”. In these suburbs, poverty, crime, and unemployment have almost become synonymous with the term banlieue as they have been left to deteriorate by successive governments. Already, the resounding sentiments of neglect and abandonment felt by many residents suggest why there exists a tension between the largely non-white residents and the largely white French government bodies.
These tensions are merely amplified by the appalling prevalence of “contrôles au faciès”, stop and search procedures which overwhelmingly target people of colour and which typically take place more than once a day in the banlieues. Although there are no official statistics on the frequency of this racial profiling in France due to French law forbidding the gathering of race-based data, a 2009 report by the Open Society Justice Initiative found that black and Arab people were six and eight times more likely to be stopped and searched by French police than their white fellow citizens. This procedure- which in fact goes against French national non-discrimination standards- has played a role in the assaults and deaths of several young men of colour in the banlieues at the hands of police. Among the most notable incidents are the 2017 rape of 22-year-old Theo– an unarmed black man- by baton-wielding police officers; the deaths of unarmed Arab and black teenage boys Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré in 2005 (which catalysed the worst riots in France in 40 years) and the 2016 death of Adama Traoré, another unarmed black man.
Anger surrounding Traoré’s death in particular has resurged in the wake of George Floyd’s death due to similarities between their cases as well as the public prominence of Traoré’s sister Assa, who has become a leading activist in the French anti-racism movement since her brother’s death and organised the Paris Black Lives Matter protests on 2nd June. Traoré died whilst being transported in a police vehicle to a Paris police station in July 2016, sparking nationwide protests in Paris, Lille, Lyon and Marseille. Although the first autopsy report listed the cause of his death as heart failure, a second, independent report found the cause of death to be asphyxiation from sustained pressure. On the day of his 24th birthday, Traoré had been arrested simply because he fled to a nearby house because he had forgotten his ID and feared the police when officers stopped and searched his older brother, with whom Traoré had been walking, in relation to another suspected offense. Like many of the people of colour who are stopped and searched by police- including all of the above victims- all of these young men were innocent.
Despite the Open Society Justice Initiative’s recommendations to the government to end stop-and-search eleven years ago, the government never acted upon this. Additional demands for the end of stop and search practises by the activist group Stop le Contrôle au Faciès were also never enacted into law, despite then-President Francois Hollande’s hollow expression of support. This has only deepened the mistrust among French people of colour towards the police, especially in the banlieues.
In fact it is only now, in 2020, that the protests in response to both Floyd and Traorés’ deaths, along with the recent revelation that a 9000-strong private Facebook group for French police officers was circulating heinous racist comments, have forced the government to finally announce plans to combat institutional racism in the French police, even if the authorities’ position remains somewhat obscure. President Macron still refuses to denounce the police as racist. Meanwhile, Paris’ polemical police prefect Didier Lallement has strongly defended his officers against any accusations of racism- including claiming in an email addressed to his officers that the Paris police “is neither violent nor racist” and “there is no race in the police”, even if the evidence suggests that this is patently untrue.
Nevertheless, the Interior minister Christophe Castaner has announced the banning of the use of the strangling technique by the police to restrain suspects; announced that officers suspected of racism will immediately be suspended and has promised “serious reforms”, including inspections of the French police regulatory bodies the IGPN and the IGGN (equivalent for the gendarmerie) which have previously been criticised for a lack of transparency and false “impartiality” as they remain tied to the police senior management.
The extent of these reforms remains largely unclear. Understandably, many French antiracism activists find them insufficient. Whilst achieving an equivalent of defunding of the police which is taking place in the US is somewhat implausible in a country with such a complex relationship to law enforcement, the government has the option to divest public funds away from its centralised police force and into other neglected areas such as social services and mental health services. Additionally, it has been suggested that officers must be better recruited, properly trained, effectively supervised and punished when they violate the law, and stop and search practises must be ended.
For many activists, however, the solution must be more collaborative, stemming not from the senior officials in government, who know next to nothing of the realities, but from the members of the communities which have been so disproportionately affected by police brutality (even before the Gilets Jaunes movement): the people of colour living in the banlieues. The damage has already been done to any semblance of trust between these communities and the authorities. Now the government must listen and avoid performing the tokenistic acts of which it has previously been so guilty. However, given the repeated refusals of the authorities to acknowledge that its police forces perpetuate the racism which they claim to be “fighting”, this might just be a dream.
Maybe this conflict between the government’s “reality” and the reality which French people of colour face every day is to be expected in a country as contradictory as France. In a society of paradoxes, perhaps it is ultimately unsurprising that the rampant institutional racism in the French police has been permitted by society, the police force and the governments’ reluctance to confront it. But, maybe, the announced reforms will mark the start of true change. After all, the power of public protest cannot be underestimated and in France, as in other countries, the desire for change shows no sign of abating anytime soon.
Find out more and how to help in France specifically (many of these resources are in French but can be translated into English via the translate function on most computers):
. Further information on Assa Traoré’s organisation Comité Vérité pour Adama : https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Comite-Verite-pour-Adama
. Petition « Laissez-nous respirer » (Let us breathe) against the impunity of the police and for greater police transparencya nd accountability for instances of police brutality, organised by the families of victims as well as activists: https://www.change.org/p/laisseznousrespirer-appel-des-familles-contre-l-impunit%C3%A9-des-violencespolici%C3%A8res?cs_tk=ArueTa4BAAAAAD47214AAXicyyvNyQEABF8BvH6fmdrOsvh1qp6L7sosgWw%3D&utm_campaign=c6d539aedbf943e386920bfccdcac7ed&utm_content=initial_v0_0_1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=aa_editorial&utm_term=cs
. Petition: «Refus de la loi visant à empêcher la diffusion des images de violences policières » (Refuse the law aiming to prevent images of incidents fo police brutality being published ) : https://click.e.change.org/f/a/gvXRTEptBJ_N_AmaLCGuCg~~/AANj1QA~/RgRgucu-P4RXAWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5nZS5vcmcvcC9nb3V2ZXJuZW1lbnQtZnJhbiVDMyVBN2Fpcy1yZWZ1cy1kZS1sYS1sb2ktdmlzYW50LSVDMyVBMC1lbXAlQzMlQUFjaGVyLWxhLWRpZmZ1c2lvbi1kZXMtaW1hZ2VzLWRlLXZpb2xlbmNlcy1wb2xpY2klQzMlQThyZXM_Y3NfdGs9QXJ1ZVRhNEJBQUFBQUQ0NzIxNEFBWGljeXl2TnlRRUFCRjhCdkg2Zm1kck9zdmgxcXA2TDdzb3NnV3clM0QmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPWM2ZDUzOWFlZGJmOTQzZTM4NjkyMGJmY2NkY2FjN2VkJnV0bV9jb250ZW50PWluaXRpYWxfdjBfMF8xJnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1hYV9lZGl0b3JpYWwmdXRtX3Rlcm09Y3NXA3NwY0IKACa-RtdebTPIHlIQam5ldm9AY2hhbmdlLm9yZ1gEAAAAAg~~
. Further information on the organisation Vies Volées (Stolen Lives)(as well as the possibility to donate, especially important if you’re France based!), in memory of victims of police brutality: https://www.viesvolees.org/
A Northern Girl in a Southern World 