NANTERRE, France: French President Emmanuel Macron is urging parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting spreading across France and says social media are fueling copycat violence.
After a second crisis meeting with senior ministers, Macron said Friday that social media are playing a “considerable role” in the spreading unrest triggered by the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old.
He said he wants social media such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content and said that violence is being organized online. Of young rioters, he said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation. More than 875 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.
Armored police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. A relative of the teen said his family is of Algerian descent. Nahel will be buried Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said the country needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
“There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency (of the situation),” he said.
The unrest extended as far as Belgium’s capital, Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France and several fires were brought under control.
In several Paris neighborhoods, groups of people hurled firecrackers at security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.
Similar incidents broke out in dozens of towns and cities across France.
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. National police said a total of 875 people were detained overnight, including 408 in the Paris region alone.
Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government effort to be “extremely firm” with rioters.
The French government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005. Yet Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne suggested Friday the option is being considered.
President Emmanuel Macron left early from an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.
The German government on Friday said it’s monitoring the unrest in France “with some concern” but that it was up to French authorities and the public there to tackle the issue.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
The shooting, captured on video, shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released under French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”
Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in traffic.
The officer who fired the shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel attempted to flee, according to Prache.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she is angry at the officer who killed her only child, but not at the police in general. “He saw a little, Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said, adding that justice should be “very firm.”
“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said.
Nahel’s grandmother, who was not identified by name, told Algerian television Ennahar TV that her family has roots in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement Thursday that grief is widely shared in the North African country.
Anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.
“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. But some increasingly vocal groups argue that this consensus conceals widespread discrimination and racism.
Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, have died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
The protests in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
In Geneva, the UN human rights office said it was concerned by the teen’s killing and the subsequent violence and urged that allegations of disproportionate use of force by authorities in quelling the unrest be swiftly investigated.
“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters.
Shamdasani said the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern in December about “the frequent use of identity checks, discriminatory stops, the application of criminal fixed fines imposed by the police or law enforcement agencies, that they said disproportionately targets members of certain minority groups.”
French president urges parents to keep teens at home to quell rioting spreading across France
https://arab.news/g7vmf
French president urges parents to keep teens at home to quell rioting spreading across France
- The fiery protests that continued early Friday morning were the third consecutive night of protests
- The teen who is only being identified by his first name, Nahel, was shot and killed by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Wednesday
Muslim leaders increase security after vandalism reports at Texas and California mosques
The recent vandalism reports have left some worried and frustrated — but not entirely surprised
TEXAS: After a spate of vandalism reports involving graffiti at a few mosques in Texas and California, Muslim leaders there have stepped up existing efforts to keep their sacred spaces and community members safe.
The incidents and subsequent hypervigilance add to what many American Muslims say has already been a charged climate amid the fallout in the US from the Israel-Hamas war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated Gaza. The war started in October 2023 with a deadly attack by Hamas on Israel.
“The past two years have been extremely difficult for American Muslims,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
A constant stream of images showing the death, destruction and ongoing starvation in Gaza has taken a toll, said Mitchell, as has a rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bigotry in the US
He pointed to one of the most egregious examples of that bigotry: After the war started, an Illinois man killed a 6-year-old Palestinian American Muslim boy and wounded his mother in a hate-crime attack.
Worry and frustration
The recent vandalism reports have left some worried and frustrated — but not entirely surprised.
“Since October 2023, we’ve definitely seen rise in Islamophobia,” said Rawand Abdelghani, who is on the board of directors of Nueces Mosque, one of the affected mosques in Austin, Texas. “Anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, all of that rhetoric that’s being said … it has contributed to things like this happening.”
Nueces security footage showed someone, their face partially covered, spray-painting what appears to be Star of David symbols at the property. CAIR Austin said similar incidents were reported at two other Austin mosques.
They all seemingly happened on the same night in May, in what the group described as part of “a disturbing pattern of hate-motivated incidents.” It called for increased security patrols and protective measures.
Shaimaa Zayan, CAIR Austin operations manager, called them an intimidation attempt.
Less than two weeks earlier, someone had spray-painted graffiti at the Islamic Center of Southern California, including the Star of David on an outer wall there, center spokesperson Omar Ricci said.
“In light of what’s going on within Palestine and the genocide in Gaza, it felt like an attack,” said Ricci, who’s also a reserve Los Angeles Police Department officer.
Some specifics remained unresolved. The LAPD said it opened a vandalism/hate crime investigation and added extra patrols, but added it has neither a suspect nor a motive and noted that nonreligious spaces were also targeted.
The Austin Police Department did not respond to Associated Press inquiries.
Nueces had already increased its security camera use following three incidents last year, including someone throwing rocks at the mosque, Abdelghani said. After the May vandalism, it also added overnight security, she added.
Nueces serves many university students and is considered a “home away from home,” Abdelghani said. It’s where they learn about their faith, meet other Muslims and find refuge, including during tense times, like when some students got arrested amid campus protests last year, she added.
CAIR says that in 2024, its offices nationwide received 8,658 complaints, the highest number it has recorded since its first civil rights report in 1996. It listed employment discrimination as the most common in 2024.
The group says last year, US Muslims, along with others of different backgrounds, “were targeted due to their anti-genocide … viewpoints.” Referencing former President Joe Biden, the CAIR report said that for “the second year in a row, the Biden-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States.”
Israel has strongly rejected allegations it’s committing genocide in Gaza, where its war with Hamas has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The initial Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed some 1,200 people, while about 250 were abducted.
Tensions in multiple spaces
The war has fueled tensions in myriad US settings. After it started, Muslim and Jewish civil rights groups reported a surge of harassment, bias and physical assaults reports against their community members. Pew Research Center in February 2024 found that 70 percent of US Muslims and nearly 90 percent of US Jews surveyed say they felt an increase in discrimination against their respective communities since the war began.
More recently, leaders of US Jewish institutions have called for more help with security after a firebomb attack in Colorado on demonstrators showing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza that left one person killed and others injured, as well as a fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.
Politically, the conflict loomed over last year’s presidential election, leaving many pro-Palestinian US voters feeling ignored by their own government’s support for Israel. It has roiled campuses and sparked debates over free speech and where political rhetoric crosses into harassment and discrimination.
There’ve been bitter disagreements, including among some Jewish Americans, about exactly what the definition of antisemitism should cover, and whether certain criticism of Israeli policies and Zionism should be included. That debate further intensified as President Donald Trump’s administration sought to deport some foreign-born pro-Palestinian campus activists.
The Islamic Center of Southern California has been targeted before, including vandalism in 2023 and separate threats that authorities said in 2016 were made by a man who was found with multiple weapons in his home.
Incidents like the latest one cause concern, Ricci said.
“People see that it’s not going to take very much to spark something in the city,” he said. “There’s a lot of emotion. There’s a lot of passion” on both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sides.
Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said “if people think they can get away with graffiti, then the next step is to firebomb a mosque or even go attack worshippers.”
Opening doors and receiving support
Al-Marayati and others praised how many have shown support for the affected Muslim communities.
“The best preparation is what we did in Los Angeles and that’s to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and be there for one another,” he said.
In Texas, a gathering at Nueces brought together neighbors and others, including Christians and Jews, to paint over the vandalism, clean up the property and garden, Zayan said.
“It was beautiful,” she said.
“It’s really important to open your doors and open your heart and invite people and to rebuild this trust and connection,” she said. “For non-Muslims, it was a great opportunity for them to show their love and support. They really wanted to do something.”
New Delhi’s high-tech suburb drowns in trash as sanitation workers flee
- Local residents took to social media to show extent of garbage problem in Gurugram
- Photos and videos show garbage piling up in residential areas, sideroads covered in junk
NEW DELHI: One of India’s most modern, high-tech, and upscale urban centers, Gurugram, is sinking in municipal waste that has not been collected for months, residents say, as sanitation workers have fled fearing a police crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Formerly known as Gurgaon, the city of skyscrapers and luxury apartments is located about 30 km south of New Delhi and was transformed over the last two decades from farming fields into a major hub for technology and outsourcing companies.
While its poor waste management system has made local headlines over the years, the problem worsened recently with garbage piling up in residential areas, sideroads covered in junk and trash burning becoming increasingly commonplace, prompting mass complaints from residents who posted visuals across social media platforms.
“There is a serious crisis in Gurgaon on waste management. Wastes are lying everywhere and the administration does not have a clue how to handle that. This is the crisis created by the administration and its policies,” Saurabh Bardhan, owner of Gurugram-based waste management company Green Bandhu, told Arab News.
Indian authorities have detained hundreds of alleged illegal immigrants in recent months, with a Human Rights Watch report published on Wednesday saying that at least 1,500 ethnic Bengali Muslims were expelled to Bangladesh “without due process” between May and June, as expulsions continue.
As many of them are employed as informal garbage collectors in Gurugram, the crackdown has affected waste management in the city.
“The migrant workers have been collecting waste for years in this so-called millennium city and they have never bothered to regularize their jobs. These workers were carrying the load of managing the city waste to a great extent,” Bardhan said.
“I heard they are being detained and this has created panic among them. But if we think that only these migrant workers are affected we are wrong. It is the whole society that is suffering because of the government’s hasty and unmindful act.”
S.S. Rohilla, public relations officer at the Municipal Corp. of Gurugram, told Arab News on Saturday that the local government is “trying to resolve the problem,” adding that the situation was “not as bad” as reported by media outlets.
But for Kalyan Singh, the waste problem in his residential area in Gurugram was a crisis.
“For the last two to three days we have been facing an acute crisis of waste lying everywhere in my (area). Never before have we faced something like this,” Singh told Arab News.
“This problem has cropped up, we learnt, after the migrant Bengali-speaking laborers have left en masse after the government’s drive to detain suspected Bangladeshis and foreigners. I hope the situation is addressed soon.”
Meanwhile, other Gurugram residents took to social media to raise concerns over public health risks and express their frustrations with the government.
“Bad roads. Poor waste management. No drainage system. Yet what does the Gurugram gov’t. choose to act on? Not infrastructure. Not public welfare. (But) targeting the people who keep this city running — the migrant workers who clean our homes and city,” Aanchal Jauhari wrote on X.
“Health Danger! Sector 70 (of) Gurugram drowning in garbage. Breeding ground for diseases,” another X user, Gautam Dhar, said. “Please help. Citizen’s health (is) at severe risk.”
Hungary’s Orban to block EU budget unless funds released
- Nationalist leader has for years clashed with Brussels over migration, LGBTQ rights and what critics see as eroding democracy in Hungary
- The EU has suspended billions of euros earmarked for Hungary while a rule-of-law dispute drags on
BUDAPEST: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban threatened on Saturday to torpedo the European Union’s new seven-year budget unless Brussels unlocks all suspended EU funds.
The nationalist leader has for years clashed with Brussels over migration, LGBTQ rights and what critics see as eroding democracy in Hungary. The EU has suspended billions of euros earmarked for Hungary while a rule-of-law dispute drags on.
“The approval of the new seven-year budget requires unanimity and until we get the remaining (frozen) funds, there won’t be a new EU budget either,” Orban said in a speech at a summer university in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad.
The European Commission has proposed a €2 trillion ($2.35 trillion) EU budget for 2028 to 2034 with emphasis on economic competitiveness and defense.
Orban also criticized the EU for supporting Ukraine and accused Brussels of planning to install a “pro-Ukraine and pro-Brussels government” in Hungary at next year’s vote.
He also accused EU leaders of risking a trade war with US President Donald Trump’s administration that Europe “cannot win.”
“The current leadership of the EU will always be the last to sign deals with the United States and always the worst deals,” Orban added, urging a change in the bloc’s leadership.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet Trump on Sunday in Scotland in search of a trade deal.
Orban, who swept the last four elections, faces a tough new opposition challenger Peter Maygar, whose center-right Tisza party has a firm lead over the ruling Fidesz in most polls at a time of economic stagnation.
Magyar told a rally on Saturday that Hungary must be firmly anchored in the EU and NATO military alliance, and Tisza would bring home all suspended EU funds if it wins in 2026.
“Hungary is an EU member and our relations as allies cannot be built on a political style of putting a spoke in the wheel,” Magyar said. He added that Tisza could not support the EU budget in current form but would be ready for talks on that.
“We need to make a clear and firm decision that our place has been and will be in Europe,” Magyar said, criticizing Orban’s close relations with Russia.
Russia seizes second village in central Ukraine
- Russian army said its forces ‘liberated the locality of Maliyevka’ in Dnipropetrovsk
- Deeper Russian advances could mean more attacks on one of Ukraine’s largest cities
MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday said it had wrested a second village in Ukraine’s central Dnipro region in a fresh advance in the industrial mining hub.
Overnight strikes between Ukraine and Russia meanwhile claimed five lives – three in central Ukraine and two in western Russia, according to officials.
The army said its forces “liberated the locality of Maliyevka” in Dnipro, a part of Ukraine’s mining heartland, particularly for coal that powers the electricity grid.
Further Russian advances could harm Ukraine’s economy and energy supplies.
Authorities have already been ordering civilians with children to flee a front line that is creeping closer.
Deeper Russian advances could mean more attacks on one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Dnipro – though Russian troops are around 200 kilometers (120 miles) away.
Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea – that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.
Trump hits Scottish golf course as protesters set to rally
- His presence has turned the picturesque and normally quiet area of southwest Scotland into a virtual fortress
- US president professes a love of Scotland, where his mother was born, but has an uneasy relationship with the nation
TURNBERRY, United Kingdom: US President Donald Trump played golf on the first full day of his visit to Scotland Saturday, as protesters prepared to take to the streets across the country.
Trump emerged from his Turnberry resort with son Eric and waved to photographers following his arrival in Scotland on Friday evening.
His presence has turned the picturesque and normally quiet area of southwest Scotland into a virtual fortress, with roads closed and police checkpoints in place.
Officers on quad bikes or horses, others on foot with sniffer dogs, patrolled the famous course – which has hosted four men’s British Opens – and the sandy beaches and grass dunes that hug the course.
The 79-year-old touched down Friday at nearby Prestwick Airport, as hundreds of onlookers came out to see Air Force One and try to catch a glimpse of its famous passenger.
The president has professed a love of Scotland, where his mother was born, but his controversial politics and business investments in the country have made for an uneasy relationship.
Speaking to reporters on the tarmac, Trump immediately waded into the debate surrounding high levels of irregular migration.
“You better get your act together or you’re not going to have Europe anymore,” he said, adding that it was “killing” the continent.
Trump’s five-day visit has divided the local community.
“A lot of people don’t trust Trump and I’m one of them. I think the man is a megalomaniac,” retiree Graham Hodgson said.
“He’s so full of himself. I think he’s doing a lot of damage worldwide with his tariffs. And I think it’s all for the sake of America, but at the moment I think America is paying the price as well for his policies.”
But at Prestwick Airport a boy held a sign that read “Welcome Trump” while a man waved a flag emblazoned with Trump’s most famous slogan – “Make America Great Again.”
“I think the best thing about Trump is he’s not actually a politician yet he’s the most powerful man in the world and I think he’s looking at the best interests of his own country,” said 46-year-old Lee McLean, who had traveled from nearby Kilmarnock.
“Most politicians should really be looking at the best interests of their own country first before looking overseas,” he said.
As the police rolled out a massive security operation, the Stop Trump Coalition announced demonstrations on Saturday near the US consulate in Edinburgh and another in Aberdeen, where Trump owns another golf resort.
Police are also monitoring any other protests that might spring up near Turnberry.
Trump has no public meetings in the diary for Saturday, but he is due to discuss trade with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday and meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
