Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
■ Paris riot police fired tear gas to disperse a protest against police brutality.
Police fire tear gas on unauthorized protest
PARIS — Paris riot police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse a largely peaceful but unauthorized protest against police brutality and entrenched racism, as France’s minorities increasingly push back against a national doctrine of colorblindness that has failed to eradicate discrimination.
The event in the French capital reflected the global emotion unleashed by the death of George Floyd in the United States and the ensuing reckoning with racial injustice and historical wrongs. In both cities, protesters defied restrictions on public gatherings imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Myriam Boicoulin, 31, who was born in the French Caribbean island of Martinique, said she marched in Paris on Saturday because she “wants to be heard.”
“The fact of being visible is enormous,” Boicoulin said. As a black woman living in mainland France, she said, “I’m constantly obliged to adapt, to make compromises, not make waves — to be almost white, in fact.”
“It’s the first time people see us,” she told The Associated Press. “Let us breathe.”
At least 15,000 people rallied in Paris, led by supporters of Adama Traore, a French black man who died in police custody in 2016 in circumstances that remain unclear despite four years of back-and-forth autopsies. No one has been charged in the case.
“We are are all demanding the same thing — fair justice for everyone,” Traore’s sister Assa told the rally.
Angry shouts rose from the racially diverse crowd as a small group of white extreme-right activists climbed a building overlooking the protest and unfurled a huge banner denouncing “anti-white racism.”
Building residents then reached out of their windows and tore down part of the banner, one raising his fist in victory. Officers prevented people attending the main rally from approaching the counter-demonstrators, but didn’t detain the farright activists until two hours later, further angering the crowd below.
Riot police then fired tear gas and charged a few unruly members of the main protest, urging them to disperse. Hundreds of other protesters took a knee and stayed for hours despite the police pressure. The crowd had initially planned to march through the city, but police decided to block them from marching, citing coronavirus concerns.
Similar protests were also held Saturday in cities around France, from Rouen in Normandy in the northwest to Marseille on the Mediterranean.
Some demonstrators were encouraged that the French government responded to the past couple of weeks of Floyd-inspired protests by banning police chokeholds and launching investigations of racist comments in private Facebook and Whatsapp groups for police.