In several cities, citizen marches of “mourning and anger” against police violence have been announced. Among them, a march in commemoration of the death of Adama Traoré, who died following an arrest. But problem for the Adama Committee, the prefectures do not want this demonstration.
After the ban on the planned march in Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise, validated on Friday by the courts, Assa Traoré, Adama’s sister and figure in the fight against police violence, had indicated that she would be present “Saturday at 3 p.m. hours Place de la République” in Paris.
However, the police headquarters indicated that an order would be issued on Saturday morning to ban this gathering, “in particular for regulatory reasons, because it is not declared”, specified a police source. It therefore follows the ban decision taken Thursday by the prefect of Val-d’Oise and confirmed Friday evening by the administrative justice.
“The government has decided to add fuel to the fire”
The judges in summary proceedings had justified their decision by “the context of the riots which followed the death of Nahel”, 17, killed by a police officer during a road check on June 27 in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris.
The latter “considered that, although the violence has decreased in recent days, its extremely recent nature does not allow us to assume that any risk of disturbing public order has disappeared”, argued the administrative court of Cergy-Pontoise. The prefecture asked “the organizers to respect this court decision and to call publicly not to go to the scene”.
In a video message posted on Twitter, Assa Traoré confirmed that “there will be no march (Saturday) in Beaumont-sur-Oise”. “The government has decided to add fuel to the fire” and “not to respect the death of my little brother”, she accused, evoking “a total lack of respect” and calling it a “pretext” the argument brandished by the prefect of a shortage of law enforcement to secure the procession.
Other events will take place
Thirty other demonstrations against police violence have been listed in France on an online map, from Lille to Marseille and from Nantes to Strasbourg.
Nearly a hundred associations, unions and political parties classified on the left, including LFI, EELV, CGT and Solidaires, called for these “citizen marches”, to express “mourning and anger” and denounce policies deemed “discriminatory against working-class neighborhoods. These organizations, mobilized “for the maintenance of public and individual freedoms”, demand “an in-depth reform of the police, of their intervention techniques and of their armament”.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran on Friday criticized organizations whose “only proposal”, according to him, is “to call for demonstrations (…) on Saturday in the big cities which have not yet recovered from the looting”. . He particularly pointed to the responsibility of elected officials, including those of rebellious France, who had called to join the forbidden march of Beaumont, accusing them of leaving “the republican arc”.