·     “Cold blood” murder of teenager at a traffic stop sparks outrage

·       Angry protests have expanded across France since Tuesday

·       Rallies turn violent after clashes with security forces

·       Macron postpones Brussels trip to chair second emergency meeting on Friday

·       40,000 officers deployed nationwide to confront protesters

·       UN calls on France to address police violence

Major French cities have been gripped by angry protests and riots after the fatal shooting of a teenage boy of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a routine traffic stop.

In a sign of the surging unrest, 40,000 police officers had been deployed across France on Friday night in comparison with the 4,000 that were mobilized only two days earlier.

On Tuesday, in the western town of Paris, French police opened fire at the teenage boy during traffic stop, fatally shooting him in the chest. The victim has only been identified as Nahel M and died at the scene.

Police initially reported that one officer had shot at the teenager because he was driving his car at him. But that narrative was quickly contradicted by footage that went viral on social media and authenticated by French news agencies.

A lawyer for the boy’s family says, “You have a video that is very clear: a police officer killed a young man of 17 years. You can see that the shooting is not within the rules.”
The lawyer added, “The images clearly showed a policeman killing a young man in cold blood.”

The murder triggered angry protests at police discrimination against ethnic groups. The protesters that began in Nanterre quickly spread nationwide and escalated to heavy clashes with police for three consecutive nights now.

Security forces in riot gear have used violence to crackdown on the protests, including the use of tear gas, batons and firing flash-balls. They were met with a barrage of projectiles. Paris is bracing for more violence.

In north-eastern Paris, security forces fired flash-balls at protesters who were burning rubbish. The crowd responded by throwing bottles.

National police said on Thursday night that officers faced new incidents in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille, including fires and fireworks.

In Marseille, France’s second city, police fired tear gas grenades during clashes with youths, the city’s main paper La Provence reported.

Macron had already convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday. On Friday, the French president canceled a planned trip to Brussels and chaired a second emergency meeting to address the growing violence.

Unrest has also been reported in other areas across France, including in the northern cities of Lille and Amiens, along with Dijon in the east and Toulouse in the south.

According to France’s interior ministry, police have arrested 667 people in the latest overnight rallies. The ministry added that the unrest has also left 249 police officers wounded, none of whom have sustained serious injuries. At least 150 people had been arrested following the second night of protests.

Authorities have little hope that their appeals for calm will lead to any form of de-escalation. They have opted for curfews, air surveillance, and halting transport in the capital after 9pm local time as part of efforts to restore calm. Reports say police stations elsewhere have also been targeted.

But the measures and heightened security have done little to deter unrest on Thursday night.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne says “all options” are being reviewed. The government has so far ruled out declaring an emergency.

The murder has fueled long-standing complaints from rights groups of police violence and systemic racism among police agencies against racially mixed suburbs that surround the major cities of France.

According to rights groups, police brutality against Africans and other minority groups is rampant in France, which has a long history of its security forces using deadly force and violence against non-white residents. That, in turn, has led to a huge gap of mistrust between minority groups and French leaders.

With the emergence of mobile phone cameras and social media, it has become easier for the public to establish real facts.

So far in 2023, Tuesday’s killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France. There were a record 13 similar murders by police last year.

Speaking to France 5 channel in her first media appearance since Tuesday’s murder, Nahel’s mother said, “[the police] didn’t need to kill my son. A bullet? So close to his chest? No, no,” the single mother told the channel in tears.

The officer “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said.

“How long is this going to go on for? How many other children are going to go like this? How many mothers will find themselves like me?” she added.

“We are sick of being treated like this. This is for Nahel, we are Nahel,” two young men calling themselves “avengers” told the Guardian. One said his family had lived in France for three generations, but “they are never going to accept us”.

The United Nations has called on France to address deep issues of racial discrimination in its police and address the use of force by its security forces.

“We are concerned by the killing of a 17-year-old of North African descent by police in France on Tuesday,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a media briefing in Geneva.

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement. We also emphasize the importance of peaceful assembly. We call on the authorities to ensure use of force by police to address violent elements in demonstrations always respects the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, precaution and accountability.

“Any allegations of disproportionate use of force must be swiftly investigated.”

In December, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination voiced its own deep concerns about the frequent use in France of identity checks, discriminatory stops, and criminal fixed fines that the committee said disproportionately targeted members of certain minority groups.

French celebrities, including footballers, have voiced their anger at what some have branded an “execution”.

Prominent football star and French national team captain Kylian Mbappe wrote on social media “I hurt for my France. Unacceptable situation. All my thoughts go to the family and loved ones of Nael, this little angel gone much too soon.”

Mike Maignan, another French international player, also posted on social media about the sense of injustice he felt. “A bullet in the head…It’s always for the same people that being in the wrong leads to death.”

Maignan’s France teammate Jules Koundé criticized the media coverage.

“As if this latest police blunder wasn’t enough, the 24-hour news channels are taking advantage of it by making a big fuss,” he wrote.

“The ‘journalists’ ask ‘questions’ with the sole aim of distorting the truth, criminalizing the victim and finding extenuating circumstances where none exist. An age-old method for masking the real problem.”

“Why don’t we turn off the TV and find out what’s going on?’ he added.

Analysts believe that nobody in France will be taking this lightly. Almost 20 years ago, Paris was rocked by three months of unrest along with a state of emergency over a similar deadly incident. The government remembers those events very well, and they are in fear of repetition.

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Police killed 24-year-old Chris Kaba in his car in south London on September 5. The post-mortem found he died from a gunshot wound sustained in the head.

In central London, people demanding justice for the victim, marched from Downing Street to Scotland Yard where speakers took to the stage.

The police watchdog investigating the killing says it will take up to nine months to conclude a probe. The time frame announced and the time it took for the officer involved to be suspended has sparked further anger. Only after days of community anger, the police announced that the officer who pulled the trigger will be suspended.

One of the victim’s cousins outlined the family’s demands, “Did the officers know that it was Chris in the car? Or were they simply following a suspect vehicle? The suspended officer must be interviewed under caution without delay and keep family informed of this. There should be a charging decision within weeks and not months.”

Speaking at the protest, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a member of parliament, said “the length of time it’s taken to suspend the officer involved is completely appalling. I can’t think of any other profession where your actions would lead to someone’s life ending and you wouldn’t immediately be suspended.”

The former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was also in attendance. He said “despite the national mourning that’s going on, it’s important because we are bearing witness to the terrible tragedy that has happened here. Imagine if no one was here. Imagine the terrible pain.

“We will carry on being here until the interview takes place under caution. I want a much higher degree of accountability to bring security and safety to our communities.”

Some of the family members of those killed by the police, some of them many years ago but still seeking justice, also attended the rally.

Lee Lawrence, whose mother Cherry Groce was shot by police in 1985, told the crowd, “When I was 11 the police came in my house and shot my innocent mum Cherry Groce in front of me and my siblings.

“My mum was paralysed. She passed in 2011 the same year when Mark Duggan was killed by police. We never got justice. Justice is about fairness and if we received justice my mother would have not been killed. We will hold their legacy and their deaths will stand for something. We owe it to them to never give up.”

Floyd Jarrett, whose mother Cynthia Jarrett died of a heart attack after a police raid in 1985, said, “Every time you take the lives of our mothers and children, we will come out and protest, I’ve seen for 30 years people make the same cry and I’m telling Chris Kaba’s family that we will stand up. No justice, no peace.”

Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean Rigg was killed in Brixton police station in 2008, said, “I’m just going to fight my tears. My condolences to Chris’ family. The whole country is grieving. We are grieving for our loved ones our kings, our queens.”

She added, “It shouldn’t take a death for us to wake up and come out in the streets again. We know there’s no justice but just us. We are not going anywhere.”

Protests have also taken place in other cities including Manchester and Cardiff as part of a national day of action.

The protesters are angry at the lack of accountability for police when they use lethal force. A similar pattern has been seen over the decades where officers kill black people and other ethnic minority groups and go unpunished.

The British police force has been censured by rights groups and United Nations experts for racism against non-white people, especially black people.

Ilyas Nagdee, Amnesty International UK’s Racial Justice Director, says: “Racism is still rampant in policing and it’s disappointing that police chiefs have stopped short of accepting that policing is institutionally racist.

“Despite the gloss sometimes put on things by senior officers, little has changed with regards to racism and misogyny in policing in the 23 years since the Macpherson report, and in some respects, things are getting worse.

“The overuse of Tasers and of stop-and-search against black people, racial profiling in the name of countering ‘gangs’, appalling incidents of misogyny and strip-searching in schools are just some of the issues which suggest the police as an organization remain in denial about its deep-rooted racist thinking and practices.”

This is while research has highlighted how institutionalized the problem has become. Blacks, Asians, and ethnic minorities have been unjustly killed by police.

Studies have found the proportion of deaths involving black, Asian, and minoritized ethnicities in police custody where restraint has been used is two times higher than it is in other deaths in custody.

And the proportion of these deaths in police custody where the use of force is used is over two times greater than it is in other deaths in custody.

According to the Office of the United Nations, High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) racism and racial discrimination against Africans and people of African descent are often rooted in policies and practices grounded in the debasement of the status of individuals in society.

The UN agency says this is particularly apparent in countries with a legacy of enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, and colonialism resulting in sizeable communities
of people of African descent.

It would appear that British police continue to live in a culture of colonialism, where black citizens in the community are still being treated as second-class citizens.

As the OHCHR states, systemic racism persists, in large part, due to misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism, and measures taken by states to date, have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices.

Statistics by the British ministry of justice highlight this racist attitude as between April 2019 and March 2020 “there were 6 stops and searches for every 1,000 White people, compared with 54 for every 1,000 Black people”.

Even in cases where an inquest has found wrongdoing by the police, no criminal investigation has been launched. This is why black communities have lost hope not just in the police but in the judicial system as well. There is rarely any justice for the many black victims of the police.

And in the few instances where cases of black people dying after being in contact with the police are examined by the justice systems, convictions are even more rare.

Reports show that since 1990 there have only been nine unlawful killing conclusions returned by juries into deaths involving the police yet none of these have resulted in murder or manslaughter prosecution.

Judging by the vast evidence of institutionalized racism in the UK police, its clear to see why there is anger and pain in black communities.

The police who are supposed to protect them and enforce the law are actually doing anything but protection and law enforcement. The judicial system is failing black people as well, meaning the lack of any accountability will see more victims at the hands of police in the future.

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Following the event, four protestors were detained by the diplomatic police as well as the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan.
Mousavi noted that the Iranian embassy will pursue all legal actions to achieve the desired result.

In recent weeks, the Azeri police and customs officials have begun imposing a “road tax” on Iranian trucks shipping fuel and other goods to neighboring Armenia, causing a strained atmosphere in relations between Tehran and Baku.

Aliyev has claimed that Iran had ignored Azerbaijan’s calls for many years to stop transporting goods to Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that’s internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory. He said no Iranian truck has entered Nagorno-Karabakh since Azerbaijan started imposing taxes

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TEHRAN (Iran News) –  “Authoritarian” health pass protests in France show no signs of letting up . Without the permits French residents are prohibited from entering many places including shopping centers, restaurants, cafes, hospitals as well as boarding long-distance trains. Even somebody dining on an outside terrace will need the pass.

Despite a public backlash and four consecutive weeks of protests against the “health pass”, Paris has extended the legislation known as Pass Sanitaire from August 9.

The passes are shown in the form of a QR code, digitally or on paper, and sent to those who are fully vaccinated, have a negative Covid-19 test, or had the disease and recovered.

The government hopes it will boost vaccination rates.

But, French President Emmanuel Macron is facing a tricky task just eight months before he seeks re-election in April 2022.

Official figures say more than 237,000 people took part in demonstrations nationwide across the weekend.

Organizers say the turnout was higher.

Opponents of Macron’s plans strongly believe the pass violates the most fundamental of French principles: the “liberty” and “equality” of the country’s national motto.

The protests have united the far right and the far left and many in between.

Critics accuse Macron of running a health “dictatorship” by forcing people to get vaccinated against their will.

They argue that the pass limits their movements outside their houses, and implicitly makes vaccinations mandatory.

During the demonstrations, protesters pointed out they are not, in principle, opposed to vaccines, but object to being forced to have them.

Experts say the key debate around the health pass has been the power of the state against the people.

Presidential Candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, describing the health pass as “absurd, unfair and authoritarian”.

The French government has defended the plan saying nobody is being forced to be vaccinated, but opponents say they are certainly being coerced.

Meanwhile, Italy also saw thousands turn out in opposition to the country’s Green Pass, which is now required for teachers and anyone attending indoor events.

The Italian Green Pass is required to enter museums, sports venues, cinemas, and indoor dining. School teachers, university staff, and students are also required to show the pass.

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According To Iran News, Protesters have marched in cities across the US for eight consecutive nights over the death of George Floyd.

The cities of Minneapolis, where Floyd died, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington as well as several other cities re-established curfews for Tuesday night in an attempt to stop the after-hours violence and looting of businesses.

The New York Police Department had arrested about 40 people as of 10 p.m. a number expected to increase, a law enforcement official told CNN.

In Atlanta, a protest was calm but after 9 p.m. police and National Guard began to sweep the streets to clear them. A CNN crew saw tear gas being used.

Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, said they used chemical agents to disperse a crowd after “being assaulted with bottles, rocks, and chemical agents.” One person was arrested there and police later tweeted that a protester with a rifle was also taken into custody.

Many of the protests began in the afternoon and lasted hours.

Earlier in Houston, where a public memorial for George Floyd will take place next week, tens of thousands of people marched to City Hall to shout his name and call for justice after his death.

The marchers, who chanted “no justice, no peace” and “Peace on the left, justice on the right,” walked or rode horses from Discovery Green park toward their destination, where organizers were scheduled to speak.

George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, addressed the crowd asking for a peaceful protest. He told them to be steadfast in the quest for police reform.

“We’re trying to break the cycle right now. We got this,” he said.

About 24 hours after people were forcibly moved from a street within view of the White House, even more protesters gathered and stayed even as the 7 p.m. curfew in DC passed.

The Minnesota Department of Human Rights is launching a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, Gov. Tim Walz announced.

The investigation will look into practices of the department for the last 10 years, he said.

A news release says the inquiry will try to determine whether police engaged in “systemic discriminatory practices towards people of color and ensure any such practices are stopped.”

Floyd, 46, died last week after Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes, according to a prosecutor’s statement of probable cause. His final words included “Mama” and “I can’t breathe.”

Three other officers who responded to the scene, two of whom helped restrain Floyd, were fired by the police chief, who said they were “complicit” in his death. They have not been charged with wrongdoing despite calls from the Floyd family and protesters.

On Monday, two different autopsies found that Floyd’s death was a homicide. A public memorial service will be held for Floyd in Minneapolis on Thursday, according to a statement from National Action Network.

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Officers struck multiple demonstrators with batons amid the protest near the Trump Tower on the city’s Near North Side, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Video sent out by another local reporter also showed police in tactical gear walking on a downtown street.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a 9 p.m. curfew that runs until 6 a.m. Sunday.

Lightfoot condemned Floyd’s death during a Saturday night news conference and defended the idea of demonstrating to honor him. But she added that a peaceful protest has “devolved into criminal conduct” and police will be aggressive with arrests for anyone caught damaging property.

“When you or anyone else behaves in this way, we all lose by giving the very same forces of oppression we are fighting against the false validation that they crave,” the mayor said, AP reported.

The crowd of thousands converged on Chicago’s Loop for Saturday’s protest march. The demonstration began at 2 p.m. and protesters began marching north about 90 minutes later, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Saturday’s demonstration came after Chicago officials, following overnight clashes with protesters, asked that additional protests remain peaceful. Demonstrations are expected throughout the weekend over Floyd’s death.

Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said peaceful protests that began Friday afternoon turned more confrontational as the night wore on, resulting in 108 arrests. Protesters blocked traffic along major streets, threw bottles and other objects at police vehicles, and shattered the windows of downtown businesses.

About a dozen squad cars were damaged and some officers suffered minor injuries, including a broken wrist.

The violence in Chicago and many other cities were sparked by anger over Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on Monday, which was captured on cellphone video. It led to the firing Tuesday of the four police officers who was arresting Floyd for suspicion of passing a counterfeit bill and to third-degree murder and manslaughter charges being filed Friday against the officer who used his knee to pin Floyd down for more than eight minutes, even as Floyd pleaded for air and went limp.

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“Any attempt to mess up Hong Kong, or even damage its prosperity and stability, will not succeed,” Mr. Wang told reporters after he met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp was headed for a thumping victory in district council elections, local media reported on Monday, a vote widely seen as a referendum on the Beijing-backed government’s handling of months of violent political unrest.

Counting was still under way following record turnout in Sunday’s elections, but results so far indicated that candidates favoring calls for greater democracy were on course to seize a shock majority of the 452 seats contested, media reports said, AFP reported.

District councils – which handle community-level concerns such as bus routes and garbage collection – have long been dominated by the pro-Beijing establishment.

The pro-democracy camp hopes weakening that grip would send a message to China and Hong Kong’s unpopular leader Carrie Lam.

Hong Kong has endured months of mass rallies and violent clashes pitting police against protesters who are mobilized by fears that Beijing is whittling away at the semi-autonomous territory’s freedoms, which are unique for China.

Their demands include direct popular elections and a probe into alleged police brutality against demonstrators.

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“From the government’s point of view, the people have the right to protest based on citizenship rights and their voice can reach officials within the framework of law,” Nobakht told a regular a press conference.

He noted that according to the Constitution, rioters are different from marchers.

“However, those who counter the riots should act within the framework of law and their authority,” the government spokesman suggested.

Since Thursday, groups of protesters have held protests in several cities across the country to voice their anger over rising prices, unemployment and corruption.

ISNA reported on Tuesday that the Interior Ministry invited secretary generals of main political parties to discuss the recent protests across the country and devise solutions to boost national unity.

Iran’s First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri tweeted on Tuesday, “Gradual and legal reformations are the way to improve the situation of the country and the people’s living standards which are possible through active participation of the people, highly talented people and the institutions. This is the way which create hope and get all involved in determining their destiny.”

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