Assa Traoré’s brother Adama Traoré died at the age of 24 in police custody. A permit was not granted for the memorial march due to the riots a week ago.
In Paris, about 2,000 people defied the protest ban on Saturday and participated in the 2016 death in police custody Adama Traore to the march organized on Memorial Day. The memorial march was called by Traoré’s sister Assa Traoréwho has organized the event every year since his brother’s death.
The Remembrance Day event was supposed to be held in Val-d’Oise, northwest of Paris, but authorities banned the event after unrest a week ago. There were riots in Paris for six nights after 17-year-old Nahel M. of Algerian background was killed by a police bullet. Fearing new unrest, the commemorative march was also banned at La Place de la République, where it was eventually organized.
According to the family of Adama Traoré, who died seven years ago, the police pushed the 24-year-old to the ground and the boy died of suffocation. The case has been compared to what happened in the United States of Geoge Floyd to die in custody in 2020.
– We march for young people and condemn police violence, Assa Traoré told the crowd gathered at La Place de la République.
– They allow the neo-Nazis to march, but not ours. France cannot teach morality: its police are racist. Its police are violent, he continued.
Elsewhere in France, around 30 demonstrations against police violence were organized on Saturday. There were demonstrations in, for example, Marseille and Strasbourg.
Many associations, organizations and political parties encouraged their supporters to join the march organized in honor of Traoré.
Nahel M.’s case has awakened people to react to structural racism and police violence.
The police broke up the crowd that had gathered at La Place de la Republique, who started walking towards Boulevard Magenta calmly.
Minister of the Interior by Gerald Darman said this week that more than 3,000 people, most of them minors, had been arrested in connection with the riots that ended a week ago.
Sources: AFP, Reuters