00:00 And the killing of 17 year old Nahala of Algerian and Moroccan descent has reignited sensitive questions over racism, racial profiling,
00:08 excessive force in France's police. For more, let's speak to Paul Smith, head of French and Francophone studies at the University of Nottingham.
00:16 Hello to you, Paul. Thank you for joining us. First question about a possible state of emergency.
00:23 Does it seem to you like that's where we're headed?
00:26 I think it's quite possible. The government used it in 2005. It was used, of course, during some of the terrorist incidents more recently under the
00:34 Hollande presidency. So I think that it's quite possible if the intelligence services are telling the government that they think that this might continue for a
00:44 long time. Let's not forget that in 2005, there were three weeks of rioting and it became from the state's perspective anyway, the maintenance of law and
00:53 order, it became necessary to invoke emergency measures.
00:56 Would that not further inflame tensions?
00:58 Yes, it will. I mean, the problem is that if you're the government, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. They need to, the government is
01:07 responsible for law and order ultimately. And they're also caught in a political row between the far left accusing the police of being systemically racist and
01:15 the far right simply pointing the finger and saying, look, you know, all these policies of various governments in the past have failed. And so that there's,
01:24 they are very much in a very, very difficult position. But as you say, introducing emergency measures might well inflame the situation.
01:34 It seems no French government has been able to resolve this issue of marginalisation or economic disadvantages that exist in the suburbs. Do you have any idea
01:46 the way Emmanuel Macron's administration should address it?
01:50 Well, I was thinking the other day, when this first broke out, I was thinking about a parallel case. If we think about Great Britain, this might not be a case
01:57 that many of your viewers know about. The death of Stephen Lawrence and the way that that was handled by the Metropolitan Police was subject to a very
02:04 important report published back in 1999, the Macpherson report. And that was really very damning. Now, that's not to say that systemic racism within the
02:12 Metropolitan Police suddenly disappeared. But it was a it was a government that was willing to entertain the possibility of a report that would be really
02:21 very critical of the situation within the police. And that may be a way that the government ultimately thinks about going. The problem for the Macron
02:33 government, the Macron administration, is that it's very much torn between its law and order wing, of course, kind of embodied by the Interior Minister
02:43 Dachmanin. And then of course, its own much softer left wing. So it's kind of pulling in two different directions over this. And as I mentioned earlier, as you as
02:52 you will know, of course, you've then got the two opposition forces on either side of it, ready to absolutely jump up and down whichever way the government
03:00 decides to go.
03:02 And when we look at this opposition forces, as some of them saying, calling for justice, that's one thing and other people, you know, encouraging people to
03:10 hit the streets. Is that the right political discourse at a moment like this?
03:15 No, well, no, nobody, nobody wants, wants chaos. The problem is that you you do have this, this kind of immediately that something as as awful as this
03:27 happened, there's always the, the what ifs and the what abouts. And so all of those kind of discourses come out the on the one side, well, it just goes to
03:36 prove that people of certain origins cannot be accommodated within France or within the Republic. And on the other side, other saying, well, you know, if we
03:46 were thinking a bit more intelligently about the relations, social relations, and so forth, and equality, then these problems wouldn't happen in the
03:54 first place. So, again, that we still come back to the these end is almost irreconcilable problems that France still, it's not so much papering over
04:05 the cracks in the sense that an awful lot of an awful lot of money has been invested in these areas. But what is not happening, this quite interesting
04:12 quotation the other day from a young lad, what 14 year old that's been talked about quite a lot on in in the French media, is this idea that actually
04:20 what's happened is that the Republic is failing this, this discourse of the Republic failing these areas that it's making these promises, and yet, it's
04:28 not delivering. Now, that's moving things a little bit away from the the specifics of what happened on Tuesday, again, as tragic and horrible as those
04:37 events were. But there is also this this sense of something, you know, that one of the things that was said was, the police are supposed to protect us,
04:44 and this happens. But of course, one can there's a counter argument to that, that I'm sure we're all well aware of.
04:51 Yeah, and this day of reckoning, the final tally I have before me 875 people arrested Thursday, and into the early hours of Friday. This reckoning,
05:03 should it maybe make France question how it actually sees race itself in terms of keeping tallies of people of colour, locations and all that to better
05:13 address if there is marginalization?
05:16 Yes, I think so. But it's gonna be very difficult to I mean, with another new story this week in France was the was the the the concert it are holding
05:25 the ban on on young Muslim girls playing football wearing a headscarf, you know, so there's, there's still quite a strong resistance to this idea that
05:35 there needs to be any kind of analysis of what is what is happening here. And that's, that's going to be a very difficult aspect of French politics and
05:48 culture. It doesn't seem to be possible to have an intelligent discussion about these things out, everything suddenly become polarised. And then and then,
05:56 you know, once that's happened, the debate falls apart.
06:00 You alluded to it earlier, the the riots of 2005, France rocked by several weeks of these riots. Does that feel like we're in on a similar trajectory here?
06:11 It's been it's odd, really, you know, you look at what's happened over the last 10 years, I was going back through the names, obviously, since 2005, you had the
06:21 Adama-Triore affair, we've had various other incidents of police violence. Now, of course, this is also in the context of law about refusing to obey the
06:31 police or refusing to comply with with the police. And that's that that's kind of changed the the the scene, for example, you know, the idea of this, this law
06:44 of refusing to comply with the police instruction. And, and then, of course, the risk that then runs of the police using necessary necessary force to
06:54 defend themselves. Now, again, that there are some big questions to ask about that. But we've seen we've seen a lot of things happening that are nothing to do
07:02 with race, which is which is police violence. I mean, if you look at the way the Giles Jaunes were dealt with, the police are using, the French police are
07:10 willing to use extreme violence to quell problems of of disorder. That's not to say that the French police are the only people that do that. The only
07:17 police force, but we have seen that. But also, you know, when you throw all of these different elements into the mix, it kind of feels like we might be in a
07:26 very dangerous place. One would like to hope that that isn't the case. But there's always this sense that we might be going back to, to somewhere like 2005.
07:39 All right, Paul. Thank you very much. Paul Smith from the University of Nottingham.
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