French president urges parents to keep teens at home to quell rioting spreading across France

Fireworks explode as policemen stand by during protests in Roubaix, northern France on June 30, 2023, three days after a teenager was shot dead during a police traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre (AFP)
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Updated 30 June 2023
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French president urges parents to keep teens at home to quell rioting spreading across France

  • The fiery protests that continued early Friday morning were the third consecutive night of protests
  • The teen who is only being identified by his first name, Nahel, was shot and killed by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Wednesday

NANTERRE, France: French President Emmanuel Macron is urging parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting spreading across France and says social media are fueling copycat violence.
After a second crisis meeting with senior ministers, Macron said Friday that social media are playing a “considerable role” in the spreading unrest triggered by the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old.
He said he wants social media such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content and said that violence is being organized online. Of young rioters, he said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation. More than 875 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.
Armored police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. A relative of the teen said his family is of Algerian descent. Nahel will be buried Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said the country needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
“There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency (of the situation),” he said.
The unrest extended as far as Belgium’s capital, Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France and several fires were brought under control.
In several Paris neighborhoods, groups of people hurled firecrackers at security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.
Similar incidents broke out in dozens of towns and cities across France.
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. National police said a total of 875 people were detained overnight, including 408 in the Paris region alone.
Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government effort to be “extremely firm” with rioters.
The French government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005. Yet Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne suggested Friday the option is being considered.
President Emmanuel Macron left early from an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.
The German government on Friday said it’s monitoring the unrest in France “with some concern” but that it was up to French authorities and the public there to tackle the issue.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
The shooting, captured on video, shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released under French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”
Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in traffic.
The officer who fired the shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel attempted to flee, according to Prache.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she is angry at the officer who killed her only child, but not at the police in general. “He saw a little, Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said, adding that justice should be “very firm.”
“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said.
Nahel’s grandmother, who was not identified by name, told Algerian television Ennahar TV that her family has roots in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement Thursday that grief is widely shared in the North African country.
Anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.
“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. But some increasingly vocal groups argue that this consensus conceals widespread discrimination and racism.
Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, have died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
The protests in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
In Geneva, the UN human rights office said it was concerned by the teen’s killing and the subsequent violence and urged that allegations of disproportionate use of force by authorities in quelling the unrest be swiftly investigated.
“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters.
Shamdasani said the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern in December about “the frequent use of identity checks, discriminatory stops, the application of criminal fixed fines imposed by the police or law enforcement agencies, that they said disproportionately targets members of certain minority groups.”


German lawyers ask court to block ship allegedly carrying explosives to Israeli company

Updated 3 sec ago
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German lawyers ask court to block ship allegedly carrying explosives to Israeli company

  • German-based Lubeca Marine, which owns the MV Kathrin, said the ship “was never scheduled to make any port calls in Israel”
BERLIN: Human rights lawyers have filed a court appeal in Berlin seeking to block a 150-metric-ton shipment of military-grade explosives aboard German cargo ship MV Kathrin which they say is to be delivered to Israel’s biggest defense contractor. The European Legal Support Center said on Wednesday the action was filed on behalf of three Palestinians from Gaza, arguing that the shipment of primarily RDX explosives could be used in munitions for Israel’s war in Gaza, potentially contributing to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel denies accusations that it has committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip, saying its forces abide by international humanitarian law while fighting Palestinian militants who operate in densely populated civilian areas.
German-based Lubeca Marine, which owns the MV Kathrin, said the ship “was never scheduled to make any port calls in Israel” and had recently discharged its cargo, originally destined for Bar, Montenegro, without disclosing where the discharge took place.
The company declined to disclose details of the cargo for contractual reasons, but said it complied fully with all international and EU regulations, ensuring necessary permits are obtained before any operations.
The ELSC said the RDX shipment was destined for Israeli Military Industries, a division of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense contractor. Elbit Systems declined to comment.
“We never claimed that the Kathrin was bound for Israel (itself), it’s the cargo which is bound for Elbit Systems,” ELSC lawyer Ahmed Abed told Reuters regarding the group’s appeal filed at Berlin’s Administrative Court. “The company ignored all the warnings.”
LSEG data and vessel-tracking website Marine Traffic indicated that the MV Kathrin had docked in the major Egyptian Mediterranean port of Alexandria on Monday and was last seen there.
According to the port of Alexandria’s website, the ship, which it identified as German, unloaded military equipment in Alexandria and was set to depart on Nov. 5.

Blinken urges China to rein in Pyongyang amid warnings that North Korean troops were set to join Russia’s war against Ukraine

Updated 8 sec ago
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Blinken urges China to rein in Pyongyang amid warnings that North Korean troops were set to join Russia’s war against Ukraine

  • Some 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, 8,000 in Kursk region
  • US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin believes Ukraine can hold Russian territory in Kursk

WASHINGTON: The United States expects North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region to enter the fight against Ukraine in the coming days, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday as he pressed China to use its influence to rein in Pyongyang.
Blinken spoke after North Korea conducted its longest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile test earlier on Thursday and South Korea warned that Pyongyang could get missile technology from Russia in exchange for helping with the war in Ukraine.
The top US diplomat said there were 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, including as many as 8,000 in the Kursk region where Ukrainian forces continue to hold territory after fighting their way into the Russian border area in August.
At a press conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their South Korean counterparts, Blinken said Russia has been training the North Korean soldiers in artillery, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, and basic infantry operations, indicating they “fully intend” to use the forces in frontline operations.
They would become legitimate military targets if they enter the battlefield, Blinken said.
“We’ve not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days,” he said.
During their meeting, the US and South Korea discussed a range of options for responding, Blinken added, saying Moscow’s use of North Korean soldiers in its “meat grinder” war against Ukraine was a “clear sign of weakness.”
Austin said the US would announce new security assistance for Ukraine in coming days.

Russia-North Korea Cooperation
Blinken and his South Korea and Japanese counterparts condemned the ICBM launch as a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions. The flight-time of the missile was 87 minutes, according to South Korea, putting nearly all of the United States within range.
The Kremlin on Thursday declined to comment when asked if Russia was helping North Korea to develop its missile and other military technology.
Blinken said Beijing, like Washington, should be very concerned about what Russia might be doing in order to enhance North Korea’s military capacities because it was destabilizing to Asia.
Austin said the Pentagon was very early in its assessment phase of the launch “and we don’t see any indication at this point that there was Russian involvement.”
Blinken said the US and South Korea agreed China should do more to curb North Korea’s provocative actions and US officials had had a “robust conversation” with Beijing this week.
“They know well the concerns that we have, and the expectations that, both in word and deed, they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities,” Blinken said of Chinese officials.
Beijing, partners with both Moscow and Pyongyang, has so far repeated calls for deescalation by all sides and a political settlement to the Korean conflict.
The United States, France, Japan, Malta, South Korea, Slovenia and Britain requested a UN Security Council meeting over the ICBM launch and two diplomats said it would likely take place on Monday.
Washington says China, which entered a “no limits” partnership with Moscow ahead of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has been supporting the Kremlin’s war with dual use goods to prop up the Russian defense industrial base.
China rejects the US accusations about what it calls normal trade with Russia.
Austin said Ukraine could hold on to Russian territory in Kursk, and that the number of North Korean troops pales in comparison to casualties Russian forces recently have been suffering — some 1,250 a day.
“I do believe that they can hold on to the territory, if they choose to do that. They do have options,” Austin said of Ukrainian troops.
Many Western analysts argue China should be alarmed by any North Korean participation in Russia’s war, saying it’s a sign Pyongyang has reduced its reliance on Beijing and that its involvement would galvanize closer ties between Washington’s European and Asian allies.
Nonetheless, Sydney Seiler, a former US national intelligence officer for North Korea, said China was not disturbed enough to actively oppose the deployments.
“I don’t think China openly supports this. But at the same time, they’re not going to do what’s necessary to stop it,” he said.


Kamala Harris says Trump’s comment on women ‘is offensive to everybody’

Updated 14 min 16 sec ago
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Kamala Harris says Trump’s comment on women ‘is offensive to everybody’

  • Trump had said he would "protect" women whether they “like it or not,” referring to abortion restrictions that he would push for if he becomes president again
  • “This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” Harris responded

PHOENIX, Arizona: Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”
“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix: “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”
The comments by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with women voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centered on freedom. She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.
Trump appointed three of the justices to the US Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and ensure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion.”
At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”
Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump.
“This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.
Harris tied Trump’s comments to his approach to reproductive rights, but Trump generally speaks more of protecting women from criminals, terrorists and foreign adversaries, in keeping with the bleak picture he paints of a country in decline.
“I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things,” Trump said during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
He seemed to tie in abortion when he first used the “protector” language in a Truth Social post and at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 20. He assured the women who would be “protected” that they “will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
The dispute showed signs Thursday of further entrenching each candidate’s supporters.
It was not only women who described Trump’s remarks as offensive. At the Harris rally in Phoenix, Edison Kinlicheenie, 50, said he sees Trump more as a threat than a protector, noting that the former president has a track record of preying on women.
“I have a wife and a daughter, so I wouldn’t let no predator like that come around” them, Kinlicheenie said.
At a Trump rally in Albuquerque, Sarah Pyle, 41, cited the opposition to allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s events to portray Trump as someone who helps women.
“I don’t want my girls to grow up in a world like this,” the Albuquerque mother said, referring to the controversy. “We fought for women’s rights for so long, and now we’re giving them back to men. It makes no sense.”
More broadly, Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, particularly as women around the nation are grappling with obtaining proper medical care because of abortion restrictions that have had implications far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Trump has given contradictory answers about his position on abortion, at some points saying that women should be punished for having abortions and showcasing the justices he appointed. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if he were elected, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”
But in recent weeks he’s promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He’s said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough.”
Since 2022, the patchwork of state laws on abortion has created uneven medical care. Some women have died. Others have bled in emergency room parking lots or became critically ill from sepsis as doctors in states with strict abortion bans send pregnant women away until they are sick enough to warrant medical care. That includes women who never intended to end pregnancies. Both infant and maternal mortality has risen.
Harris’ campaign has highlighted Trump’s statements around women. In one campaign ad, a woman who became gravely ill with sepsis after a pregnancy complication stands in front of a mirror looking at a large scar on her abdomen, as audio plays of Trump’s comments about protecting women.
Harris hopes abortion will be a strong motivator for women at the ballot box.
In early voting so far, 1.2 million more women than men have voted across the seven battleground states, according to data from analytics firm TargetSmart.
That doesn’t necessarily translate into Democratic gains. But in the 2020 presidential election, there was a 9 percentage point difference between men and women in support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters.
The Democratic ticket was supported by 55 percent of women and 46 percent of men. That was essentially unchanged from the 2018 midterms, when VoteCast found a 10-point gender gap, with 58 percent of women and 48 percent of men backing Democrats in congressional races.
 


UN rapporteur urges climate activist’s release ahead of COP29

Updated 26 min 43 sec ago
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UN rapporteur urges climate activist’s release ahead of COP29

GENEVA: The UN rapporteur on environmental defenders on Thursday urged Azerbaijan to free Anar Mammadli, saying his detention seemed aimed at silencing climate advocates ahead of November’s COP29 summit.
Michel Forst voiced alarm over the alleged “persecution, penalization and harassment” of Mammadli, who has now been in pre-trial detention for six months on “allegedly trumped-up criminal charges” in what the rapporteur called “apparent reprisal for his environmental activism.”
“I am gravely concerned about the deterioration in the treatment of Mr.Mammadli and the crackdowns on civil society actors, including environmental defenders,” Forst said in a statement.
Mammadli risks up to eight years behind bars on smuggling charges which human rights groups claim are bogus.
He and activist Bashir Suleymanli had formed a civil society group called Climate of Justice Initiative, which set out to promote environmental justice in the tightly-controlled, oil-rich nation.
The COP29 UN climate summit is being held in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku from November 11-22.
Forst said it appeared that the charges and the lengthy detention “were a form of retaliation against Mr. Mammadli for his efforts in the lead up to COP29.”
His ongoing detention on charges subject only to a preliminary investigation “therefore appears grossly unreasonable and disproportionate.”
“The length of Mr. Mammadli’s pre-trial detention also strongly indicates that it is a measure that is punitive in nature, aiming to intimidate Mr. Mammadli and other environmental defenders from speaking out, particularly in the lead up to COP29. This is unacceptable.”
Mammadli’s health has deteriorated in detention and served to “further penalize” him, Forst said, calling for his immediate release and for the charges to be “immediately dropped.”
As UN special rapporteur, Forst is tasked with taking measures to protect any person experiencing or at imminent threat of penalization, persecution or harassment for seeking to exercise their rights under the convention.
Azerbaijan is a party to the convention.
The former Soviet republic wedged between Russia and Iran has faced considerable scrutiny over its hosting of COP29.
 


Germany to close Iranian consulates over execution

Updated 36 min 49 sec ago
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Germany to close Iranian consulates over execution

BERLIN: Germany will close the three Iranian consulates on its soil in response to the execution of German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Thursday.
“We have repeatedly and unequivocally made it clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” Baerbock said, announcing the closure of the consulates in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg in a televised announcement.
The execution, announced on Monday, had already provoked tit-for-tat diplomatic protests, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz calling it a “scandal.”
“The fact that this assassination took place in the light of the latest developments in the Middle East shows that (Iran’s) dictatorial, unjust regime... does not act according to normal diplomatic logic,” Baerbock said.
“It is not without reason that our diplomatic relations are already at an all-time low,” she said.
The closures will affect a total of 32 consular staff, according to the foreign ministry.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry responded Thursday evening, denouncing the “irrational decision” that “cannot be justified,” and said it had summoned Berlin’s ambassador to Tehran to convey Iran’s “strong protest.”
Baerbock did not mention Iran’s embassy in Berlin but said Germany would “continue to maintain our diplomatic channels and our embassy in Tehran.”
Among other reasons, this was necessary in order for the government to continue to press for the release of the other German citizens whom “the regime is unjustly detaining,” she said.


Sharmahd, 69, had been sentenced to death in February 2023 for the capital offense of “corruption on Earth,” a sentence later confirmed by the Iranian Supreme Court.
He had been convicted of playing a role in a 2008 mosque bombing in the southern city of Shiraz, in which 14 people were killed and 300 wounded.
His family have long maintained that Sharmahd was innocent and Amnesty International said he had been the victim of a “show trial.”
But Iran has defended his execution and declared that “a German passport does not provide impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal.”
Germany is also understood to be pushing for further sanctions against Iran at the EU level.
“In Brussels I have been pushing for the Revolutionary Guards to be listed as a terror organization,” Baerbock said on Thursday.
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell earlier this week said the bloc condemned Sharmahd’s “killing in the strongest possible terms” and was “considering measures in response.”
Sharmahd, a German citizen of Iranian descent and a US resident, was a software engineer who had worked and written for an Iranian opposition group’s website based abroad that strongly criticized the Islamic republic’s leadership.