France: Immigrant death
01 January 1991
France: Immigrant death
artdoc May=1994
According to French police, an African man committed suicide by
jumping into the River Seine in order to avoid a police identity
check. When the police asked the man, to come with them to the
police station, after he produced a photocopy of his documents
which they were unsatisfied with, the African threw himself over
Paris' Pont Neuf bridge. The photocopied-documents, it was
revealed, were of a provisional French residence permit
identifying him as the 23-year-old Zairean-born Angolan, Andre
Nkala (Morning Star 18.8.93).
Two days after the death of Andre Nkala, anti-racist
organisations called a demonstration on the Pont Neuf bridge
(L'Humanite 17,18.9,93).
Identity checks lead to fighting in Paris
Police and immigrants clashed in the Les Halles district of
central Paris following the refusal by two South American
musicians to produce identity cards to police. Those arrested,
who included an AIDS sufferer, later reported police brutality
and the use of racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic abuse by
police (Le Monde 4.9.93, Liberation 7.9.93).
Police were also deployed in force in August in the Goutte d'Or
and Barbes districts of Paris 18, described as an area `where
many immigrants live and with a population noted for crime linked
to drugs'. Local residents, and even local police, claim these
measures have had little effect (Le Monde 18.8.93).
Pasqua calls for `courteous' identity checks
The Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, told a meeting of police
officers that the police must be `polite and courteous' when
stopping police and demanding identity papers. To back this up
he suggested a competition with prizes, for the most polite and
disciplined unit.
Pasqua's call follows changes to the rules of procedure in
carrying out identity checks. Previously, the police had to
justify an identity check by reference to details of the
behaviour of the person to be checked. While this did little to
prevent checks, it did give a legal cause for complaints against
the police. Now, even this provision has been removed. In terms
of checks on foreigners to prove their right to be in the
country, the police must still have evidence to justify a check
but this can be as little as the possession of a newspaper in a
foreign language or the registration of a `suspect's' car (Le
Quotidien 21.9.93).
Riot police used to enforce evictions
- Paris:
In August, riot police forced 23 mostly immigrant families out
of a squat in a disused orphanage in the south of Paris, in a
dawn raid. When the Appeal Court ruled that the families should
be allowed to return to the building for six months while they
find more permanent accommodation, the police refused to let them
return, fighting off protestors with batons, and gutting the
interior of the building , making it unhabitable. In a week of
violent clashes, five people, three of them children, were
injured by baton blows.
After a series of protests, and the intervention of the well
respected Abbe Pierre, the authorities have promised to rehouse
the squatters (Guardian 25.9.93).
Fifty buses of CRS riot police were used to form a road block
in order to evict the 70 inhabitants (thirty of whom were
children) of Menilmontant in the twentieth arrondissement of
Paris. The evictions caused mayhem, with fathers returning from
nightshift unable to locate their wives and children, some of
whom had been dispersed to hotels and hostels. Others were left
unhoused. When the police were criticised for taking the families
belongings to a depot, they responded by saying that `it doesn't
matter because residents don't have belongings'. The prefecture
of police says that deportation orders have been served against
11 foreigners without papers. One resident, it is alleged, was
made to give up his ID papers to the police for no apparent
reason.
The evictions have caused panic in the area. One<