rance has erupted into countrywide protests following the fatal shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a young French man of Arab origin, by a policeman on June 27 at a traffic stop. As is always the case with killings involving the police and ethnic minorities, the version of events advanced by the police was soon contradicted by social media footage. The resulting protests represented a second eruption after 2005 when two young French men of ethnic minority background were found electrocuted to death in an electric station where they had found refuge from an aggressive chase by police officers.

In 2005, as in June this year, the country blazed into a wave of protests which again exposed the overbearing and harsh policing of the French ethnic minorities. However, unlike in 2005, when (the then) President Sarkozy put the entire blame on the victims and branded them the scum, President Marcon was careful not to inflame the situation. Instead, he pointed a finger at the policeman involved in unprovoked fatal shooting and charges were accordingly slapped. On the face of it, this represents an advance of some sort. However, this is a minor refresh rather than a major upgrade.

The June event again brings to the surface long-neglected issue of racist and excessively harsh policing practices that breed tensions between the police and the French youth concentrated in deprived suburban areas (The latest incident occurred in Nanterre, a deprived suburb of Paris). The widespread unrest saw not only police stations but also cars and schools torched in various parts of the county. French authorities arrested thousands and the president took the extreme measure of shutting down social media to douse down the spreading flame of protests.

Despite the furore, the police further inflamed the situation when Yousaf Traoré, the brother of Adama Traoré, who was killed in police custody in 2016., was roughed up during the march amid intense media coverage. This shows that the French police are still acting out of its old copybook, even amid calls for change to the French policing triggered by the shooting of Nahel. The UN human rights watchdog echoed the sentiments of the protestors by describing Nahel’s shooting as a wakeup call for the French criminal justice system to address deep-rooted issues of racism and racial discrimination in its policing and law enforcement practices.

The June event in a Paris suburb did not come out of nowhere. Its lineaments, its combustible ingredients have been embedded in discriminatory social policy and law enforcement. In fact, discriminatory and harsh policing of migrants and French citizens of ethnic minority backgrounds has been a long-standing issue. This also applies to some other Western countries. In the US, in recent years, a score of Afro-Americans have been killed by police using firearms and disproportionate and unwarranted force. The most recent case in point was that of George Floyd, which led to a movement under the banner of Black Lives Matter. In the UK, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry discovered a culture of institutional racism embedded in policing practices. In both countries, one study after another has concluded that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are likelier to be disproportionately stopped, searched and convicted. The same is true of other Western countries. In the US, the incarceration rate for Afro-American citizens is way above their proportion of the population.

In France, the shooting of Nahel Merzouk has been described as France’s George Floyd moment. French policing has a history of harshly targeting and policing French youth from ethnic minority backgrounds. The tensions between the overbearing policing and the youth are particularly notable in banlieues (suburban areas) where poverty, deprivation and youth employment are stark realities.

Though France takes great pride in civic secular French citizenship, the name, skin colour and religious affiliation can mark you out for discrimination in employment, housing and education; and the criminal justice system. The policing practices, according to one commentator, have been derived from colonial days when French police rigorously controlled and policed the colonised. These practices seeped into the culture of French policing even after decolonisation and colonial-style policing practices continue to be exercised in relation to migrants and French youth from ethnic minority backgrounds.

As well as enjoying colonial-era policing powers, one recent weapon added to the armoury of the French police was the enhanced power to use firearms. As a result, shooting at traffic stops seems to have increased. In 2022 alone, 13 shootings took place at traffic stops. Nahel Merzouk’s shooting was one too many in the year 2023. Regular protests, which have resulted from these police brutalities, have failed to make any dent in discriminatory policing practices over the decades. However, unlike in the past, when such brutalities were hidden and perpetrated beyond the citizen cameras, the explosion of social media has regularly exposed such unwarranted policing brutality. The resulting protests have added to the clamour for change in how ethnic minorities in France are unfairly policed.

The least the government can do is to institute an official inquiry into the June event leading to the killing of Nehal on the lines of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry in the UK. The Lawrence inquiry, set up in the wake of the racist murder of a black teenager in London and the ensuing discriminatory handling of the police investigation, found a deep-rooted culture of institutional racism in policing practices and procedures. The inquiry held a mirror to the nation. Its recommendations were accepted and implemented by the government of the day. Without such an open inquiry, the unaccountable shootings such as Nahel’s will continue to pile up, storing and fuelling resentment over the historical mistreatment by police of migrants and French citizens from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The writer is the author of Patient Pakistan: Reforming and Fixing Healthcare for All in the 21st Century. He has worked on refugee projects in Europe, the UK, Greece and Lebanon