Ahead of Bastille Day, France Fears Firestorm of New Riots

Bastille Day in France this year will be no Fourth of July. The writing was not on the wall but rather in a decree published in the French government gazette on Sunday that prohibited the sale and use of fireworks throughout the country until July 15 — the day after France’s national celebration. In the words of the French prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, private fireworks are being banned as a “massive means to protect the French” after several days of riots that caused more than a half-billion dollars in damages.The attacks on storefronts and public buildings in the Paris region and in virtually every major French city followed the shooting death of a French teenager, Nahel M., on June 27 by a French police officer. The French insurance federation estimates that the destruction after nearly a week of rioting will result in costs three times higher than the damages wrought by urban riots in 2005. The recent violence has left the government of President Macron weakened and French citizens on edge. While the traditional, widely televised fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower will proceed as planned on July 14, municipal authorities at many towns across France have already canceled Bastille Day celebrations out of concerns that they could set off a fresh round of rioting. Monsieur Macron has been widely criticized for an approach to the violence considered tone-deaf and aloof. Soon after news broke of the fatal shooting at Nanterre, a suburb just outside Paris, instead of calling the slain teen’s mother, Mr. Macron attended an Elton John concert. The French president shimmied as parts of Paris looked set to go up in flames.He later blamed bad parenting and video games for the rampages that were undertaken by mainly socially disadvantaged youths from immigrant backgrounds living in inner cities. Tellingly, Mr. Macron’s chief rival on the right, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party, stayed mostly silent as France reeled from the violence. That quiet appears to be paying off in polling, which indicates that slightly more than half of French voters would favor Ms. Le Pen over Mr. Macron were elections to be held now. Yet in the National Assembly last week Ms. Le Pen accused the government of failing to learn any lessons from the 2005 riots and of pouring billions of euros into the troubled suburban “no-go” zones to no avail. “How did you let France come to this point?” she asked.Another of Mr. Macron’s opponents, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the France Unbowed coalition, has in the wake of the recent violence thrown punches at the president from the left. In an interview with Mediapart, Mr. Mélenchon accused Mr. Macron of mismanaging the French police force and in effect endowing law enforcement with too much power. In his estimation, the French leader should have suspended a controversial 2017 “shoot to kill” law but failed to either do so or to do anything to address systematic problems in the force. He said that had Mr. Macron visited or even called Nahel’s mother, it “would have been an extremely powerful gesture, to show that there isn’t a disconnect between the population and the authorities.”That disconnect is not only gaping, but getting wider.For Mr. Mélenchon, Mr. Macron’s scapegoating of video games and parents was nothing more than a “diversionary tactic.” He insists that “we are in danger because the government no longer controls the police. … It’s subservient to them.”Mr. Macron has faced criticism for an authoritarian drift after deploying thousands of additional police officers to the streets of Paris and other French cities during the riots and also for having threatened to cut off access to social media platforms. Amid growing concerns at Brussels that France is incapable of managing its national police force, the French have told the European Union to mind their own business. Last week the European commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, told a Belgian interviewer, “We need to examine the very high level of violence [in France], because it sometimes poses a challenge in the behavior of a certain number of police officers — as we’ve seen from the dramatic situations that have occurred.”That prompted a rebuke from the French state secretary for Europe, Laurence Boone, who stated, “It’s not up to Didier Reynders or the European Commission to take an interest in the way France manages its police force.”Even the United Nations has come down on France over its inability to keep its domestic house in order. The UN’s human rights office last week called on France to “seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement.”In response, the French foreign ministry stated that “any accusation of racism or of systemic discrimination by law enforcement agencies in France is completely groundless.”With a markedly muted Bastille Day celebration just around the corner, that as well as Mr. Macron’s ability to govern effectively is open to some debate.

Ahead of Bastille Day, France Fears Firestorm of New Riots

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