French Muslim teen shooting highlights systemic racism, Islamophobia: researcher
ISTANBUL (AA): Last week’s fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Muslim of Algerian descent Nahel M. has shed light on the wider issue of systemic racism in French society. According to a researcher, the malaise is deeply rooted in the country’s colonial past and continues to permeate its institutions.
Police and other law enforcers have systematically targeted people of color in France, particularly those of African and Middle Eastern descent, according to Emmanuel Achiri, a policy and advocacy adviser at the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), and Rayan Freschi, a researcher for the UK-based advocacy group CAGE.
Citing ENAR data on police brutality in France, Achiri said a staggering 90% of all people “killed as a result of confrontations with police over the last decade have been persons of Black and Arab descent.”
Moreover, people hailing from Northern Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa are 20 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police or likely to be victims of police violence, he said.
For Achiri, who focuses specifically on policing and migration, Nahel’s killing was “not a coincidence” as it ties in with the larger trend of police brutality against specific communities.
“It’s not just an issue of systemic racism within the police. It’s an issue of systemic racism within French society,” said Achiri, stressing the need for authorities to recognize the racial component in the death of Nahel, a Muslim teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent.
Achiri said France’s “very racist, violent and brutal” colonial history also remains a major factor.
Freschi, a Muslim who lives in Paris, explained how French law enforcement today has strikingly similar attributes and functions to the colonial era.
“During the colonial time, the function of the police was to subdue the indigenous population, the non-white population, the colonized, to make sure that they submitted to the republic’s rule,” he said.
“We don’t say colonized anymore, we say immigrants, but the dynamics between the institution of the police and the immigrants is almost the same.”
Building on the same point, Achiri spoke about the 1961 massacre in Paris, when French forces killed as many as 400 Muslim Algerians and dumped their bodies into the Seine River.
The victims were among tens of thousands who took to the streets in support of Algeria’s War of Independence against French occupation, which ended the next year and saw the North African nation break free after over a century of French colonial occupation.
“There’s been no apology right up until now. There is a recognition that it happened, but there’s been no apology from successive French administrations,” said Achiri.
Faith and unfounded fears
Freschi said a combination of Islamophobia and racism is fueling violent police behavior toward people of color and Muslims in France.
He said discrimination based on religious identity and the color of people’s skin and white supremacist tendencies are rampant among police in France.
These ideas are also prevalent in a large share of the population, politicians and French institutions, he added.
“In the eyes of a police officer, a North African, a Black man, most of the time, he’s a Muslim. He holds a faith, Islam, which is regarded as a clear security threat in the entire nation,” said Freschi.
He said such sentiments have drastically spiked since the September 11 attacks in the US and the ensuing “War on Terror” which targeted and stereotyped Muslims as violent people.
Adding to the fire of police brutality is the 2017 legislation that handed law enforcers “a license to kill.”
“That piece of legislation was adopted amid a very strong Islamophobic push to basically loosen the legal framework regulating police intervention,” he explained.
“Police officers are not held accountable for their actions. If you look at the year 2022, 30 men of African descent died at the hands of the police.”
Police unions ‘perpetuating system of violence’
Achiri shed light on the role of police unions and how they continue to obstruct any push for accountability.
“Whenever these incidents happen, they come out in support of the police officer,” he said, adding that they also tend to blame the victims and enjoy support from far-right politicians.
Hardly any police officers involved in killing innocent people have been penalized, he said.
“The unions are perpetuating the system of violence because they put a lot of pressure on the political parties, as well as on the victims,” he explained.