RIGHTS-FRANCE: Police Bear Down on Immigrants

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Mar 4 2003 (IPS) - The killing of a 17-year-old boy by French police has drawn attention again to tough police action against young immigrants.

Police officers shot dead Mourad, a 17-year-old of Algerian origin in the Mediterranean village Durfort, some 900 kilometres south of Paris on Saturday. The killing provoked riots in the city Nimes where he lived.

Youths of immigrant origin hurled Molotov cocktails and burning garbage cans at police cars. The rioting continued Sunday and Monday.

Official reports say four police officers fired on a group of three boys as they fled the police. They were suspected of trying to commit burglary. Mourad was hit by a single shot in the head, and died soon in a nearby hospital.

"This killing is the result of the policy that (minister for the interior) Nicolas Sarkozy has been implementing against us immigrants," Mourad’s sister said.

Nicolas Chambaret, lawyer for the victim’s family said "the officers had no justification in shooting at the boys. The boys weren’t carrying weapons, and the only charge against them was that they were suspected of trying to commit burglary."

The four police officers involved in the killing have been suspended. An autopsy is expected to specify which officer shot Mourad.

Human rights groups and law experts have been warning against pressure from the right-wing government on police to crack down on youths of immigrant origin.

"In the region around Paris, mostly inhabited by immigrants, police actions against youths have skyrocketed," says Bruno Thouzellier, leader of the Union of Magistrates. "Last year these actions went up more than 40 per cent."

The right-wing government has given the highest priority to the fight against petty crime, says Michel Tubiana from the French League of Human Rights. "It has given police officers the backing to do almost whatever it takes to pursue alleged criminals," he says. "This policy is having extremely harmful consequences."

The police have been armed with new powers to deal with "rebellion and aggression against police officers". Most charges of such rebellion and aggression follow police raids in poor neighbourhoods to check identity papers. The French Union of Lawyers and the League of Human Rights accuse police officers in a joint report of "provoking mutinies out of nothing."

The report by the two groups says: "In most cases we have investigated, when police officers came, nothing wrong was going on. Young men would be peacefully gathering in social centres or in their neighbourhoods. But after police officers appeared, there would be a mutiny, with police officers rounding up North Africans and Africans."

The report says the police provoke the youth to react, and then prosecute them for their reaction. "Later, at the tribunal, boys and young men are simply accused of rebellion and aggression against police," says Emmanuelle Le Chevallier, president of the anti-racism group Movement for Friendship among Peoples. "Testimonies by a group of police officers are more credible that those of immigrant youth. Accusations against police officers of illegitimate violence have no chance of succeeding."

Inquiries following complaints have rarely led to action against police officers. The result of inquiries by the General Inspection of Police Services, a sort of police within the police, remain secret. "We believe that such inquiries are managed to protect abusive police officers," Le Chevallier says.

But some police officers have been suspended following the death of two immigrants before the shooting of Mourad. Argentinean Ricardo Barrientos died of a heart attack at Charles de Gaulle airport December 30 after police officers forced him into a flight headed for Buenos Aires.

On January 11, Somali immigrant Mariam Getu Hagos suffered a heart attack when he was being forced to take a flight out. He died two weeks later.

In both cases, police officers were accused of using violent methods to force the two immigrants on to the aircraft.

Many immigrants of Arab or African origin complain they have been attacked by police officers. Diane, a 37-year old immigrant from Benin in Africa was attacked by police officers in Paris apparently because she had placed her three-year old daughter’s push chair in a spot on a bus reserved for handicapped people.

The bus was empty, and Diane had valid identity papers and a ticket to show, but the police abused her, she told IPS. "They told me, ‘you dirty nigger, it is people like you have put our country in a mess’."

The police officers handcuffed her, and continued to insult her, she said. She was released after several hours of detention without any explanation. She was later charged with "rebellion and aggression against authorities."

Sarkozy dismisses such complaints. "All complaints against our police have been investigated, and almost without exception have been revealed as lies," Sarkozy says. "There is no other public service that is so much controlled as police officers."

Sarkozy accused "so-called human rights groups" of worrying only about "their image and their good conscience." Human rights groups "cannot stand our success against crime," he says. "But I don’t care, because 70 per cent of the French population supports our domestic security policy."