Police Violence in France
Matthew Casse, VICE News, 2020 (10 mins)
George Floyd Is Reminding France of Its Own Systemic Racism. In June, while the U.S. took to the streets demanding justice for George Floyd, Parisians reignited their calls for justice for Adama Traoré, a Black man who died exactly 4 years ago while being detained by the French national guard.The rejection in France of ‘race’ as a biological category leads to its neglect as a socio-political category.
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The Paris massacre of 1961 occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the French government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of 100 to 300 victims.[1] Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as mass drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators in the river Seine. Maurica Pappon was a Nazi collaborator in the wartime Vichy government. He was the second official in the Bordeaux region (the secretary-general of the prefecture of Gironde) and the supervisor of its Service for Jewish Questions. With authority over Jewish affairs, Papon regularly collaborated with Nazi Germany‘s SS Corps, which was responsible for the extermination of Jews.(from Wikipedia)
Some film from October 1961.
Aaron Maté’s piece in Real News from 2017 on the anniversary of the massacre.
