Arabicide in France
01 January 1991
Arabicide in France
artdoc August=1992
CARF no 8, May/June 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]
Racial violence in France is of epidemic proportions. Over 200
North African men have been killed on the streets or in their
homes,the result of racial incidents, between 1980 and 1990. CARF is
now working with the French organisation MRAP (the Movement
against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples) to analyse
the extent of racist murders in France.
Preliminary analysis of MRAP's information shows, not
unexpectedly, that the regions where the highest number of
attacks take place are also those where the Front National has
most support. In one tenth of all the murders on the streets,
assailants were either members of extremist parties or clearly
racist sympathisers who wore nazi regalia or volunteered the
fact that they did not like `these lay-abouts', these yellow
people', or, like the savage attackers of Mohamed Nasser
Arabat in Nice on 27 November 1981, had just 'decided to do an
Arab'.
Trigger-happy
The most striking thing is that, for a people which prides
itself on its enlightenment and culture, the French appear to
be so trigger-happy. It is not just the police who are armed
in France. Everyone, from bar-owners to pensioners and the
unemployed, in any neighbourhood or housing block, seems to
have access to a gun of some sort. And these are used with
impunity against Maghrebian people to settle any quarrel,
however petty - be it about noise at night, children throwing
pebbles, someone knocking a car mirror, or living with a white
woman.
In Nevers, in June 1987, 18-year old Abdel Abonis refused
Gilles Blin and his 34-year-old uncle, Claude Donnet, a
cigarette. Donnet went to his car, found his pistol and shot
Abdel through the head.
Police killings
Killings by the police (and there are over 40 in MRAP's
dossier) show a consistent pattern. A young black man is
stopped on suspicion of being about to commit, or having com-
mitted, a robbery or a trivial motoring offence, or f or not
stopping at a roadblock. Somehow he ends up shot dead. And the
police, who plead self-defence (or manslaughter when that
falls), almost always get off scot free. On 26 August 1983, a
policeman shot Mohamed Abdelall in his chest after he had
allegedly threatened another officer with a piece of glass
when caught pick-pocketing outside the Madeleine in Paris. The
magistrate said that the police had no charge to answer.
Like the British experience
There are many cases in France that uncannily mirror Britain's
black experience. MRAP's dossier includes, for example, five
suspicious suicides where the families of the deceased are not
satisfied with the official explanation of death. Then there
are the four cases where bodies were found floating in the
river, with no explanation of how they died. There are also
the high-speed police car chases which end fatally.
And, as in Britain, black people appear to die in custody
through neglect and brutality. At least six such cases are
recorded. Mohamed Laouer, a 17-year-old Algerian, was taken to
Bondy police station where he was kept until the next
lunchtime without receiving any attention, despite the fact
that he was dying an agonising death caused by a drugs
overdose. Another young man, awaiting trial for stealing a
car, died mysteriously in a prison hospital he had unexplained
bruising and was bandaged. After being arrested for making
noise at night, Farid El Orabi died in La Rochelle police
station. The cause of death was given as cardiac arrest, but
witnesses said he had been beaten.
French-style violence
MRAP also lists deaths which appear to be particular to
France. First, there are the attacks on Sonacotra, the hostels
built for French migrants in the 1960s. At least three men
have been shot by racists in the entrance to their housing.
Second, at least six deaths are recorded which took place
during or