By Shazrina Sofia
NANTERRE, 28 June 2023: Following the death of 17-year-old French citizen Nahel Merzouk, better known as “Nael M” on social media, a series of civil disturbances have broken out ever since across France.
Nael M, the 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, met his demise on the 27th of June, around 9:15 am CEST, after being shot around 8:16 am after attempting to flee from one of the police officers that had stopped him at Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France.
The police claimed that Nael M had failed to abide by traffic rules and purposely committed several offenses, including “attempting to run the police over”, which justified the shooting as “self-defense”.
However, after a video of Nael M’s homicide circulated and went viral on social media, it posed a challenge to the police’s statement. It was proven in the viral video that the deceased’s car was in no position to harm the police and that the deceased had not driven the car in their direction, to begin with.
Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, claimed that the police’s action in shooting Nael M was “inexcusable and unforgivable”, and that it had “moved the entire nation”. His words were, however, opposed by Marine Le Pen, the leader of one of France’s far-right political parties, the National Rally party, who criticized the President’s words as “excessive and irresponsible”. The deceased mother, as well, had called for a revolt for her son on TikTok.
In response, the death of Nael M sparked outrage in France and all over the Internet, as the deceased was claimed to be a victim of France’s prolonged issue of police brutality and racial profiling.
The civil disturbances began in Nanterre on the same day of the incident, where residents united together for a protest against the police, which eventually led to the start of a riot. The protestors set a school, cars, and bus shelters aflame, and the riots lasted until morning in the region, spreading to other areas in Île-de-France.
Ever since, the rioting has begun to spread like wildfire to other regions of France, such as Colmar, Roubaix, Amiens, Dijon, Lyon, Lille, Saint-Étienne, Clermont-Ferrand, and Strasbourg, and has yet to cease as protestors set France alight in the name of Nael M’s death.***
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