Nahel Merzouk France Protests 2023

Overview

Nahel Merzouk France Protests 2023, also known by the associated slogan Justice Pour Nahel, refers to events following the killing of a 17-year-old-boy named Nahel Merzouk by a French police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre, a city just outside Paris, on June 27th, 2023. The killing was followed by protests and violent rioting around the country, as well as an ongoing debate over police brutality and racism in France. As the events surrounding the protests spread online, they subsequently sparked viral discourse across social media, similar to the French Pension Protests earlier that year.

Background

Around 7:55 a.m. Central European Time (CET) on Tuesday, June 27th, 2023, two police officers reportedly pursued a car driven by Nahel Merzouk with two passengers in it.^[1] The car was speeding and didn't stop when they turned on their lights and sirens. After a 20-minute pursuit, the car stopped in traffic and the police officers approached it.

One of the officers then lifted his gun and shot the 17-year-old boy in the chest at point-blank range, stating that he wanted to stop him from restarting the car and trying to drive away. The police officers later claimed that the car was threatening to run them over, however, a bystander video taken of the incident attempted to refute this.^[1] After the video's circulation, a protest movement began, which was followed by riots and looting in the following days.

According to CNN affiliate BFMTV, ^[14] Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez said in an interview that the officer fired when the teenager refused to follow police instructions, stating, "This vehicle made a first refusal to comply, then it was blocked in the flow of traffic where there was a new control attempt by the two police officers. At that time the driver, who had first turned off the engine, restarted the vehicle, then left. It was in this context that the policeman used his firearm."

Historical Context

The use of guns by police in France has historically been highly restricted.^[15] For many years, French police were only legally allowed to fire a gun in self-defense. A controversial 2017 law then expanded the number of situations in which French police could use their weapons.^[2]

According to reports,^[16] French police and authorities have also historically discriminated against people of color and immigrants in France. In the banlieues (poor neighborhoods that ring major French cities) police violence is a documented problem.^[17] The riots following the killing of Nahel were reminiscent of a series of riots in 2005, which were sparked by an incident of police violence that resulted in the deaths of several children.^[16] The 2005 riots occurred in many of the same banlieues and lasted for three weeks with considerable violence and destruction.

Months prior in 2023, France had also already seen considerable protests and rioting surrounding the forced passage of a reform to the retirement age, contentiously raising it to 64 years.

Developments

Paramedic Video

Following the killing, a video of the paramedic who treated Nahel Merzouk yelling at the police officer who shot him went viral. The video was widely reposted, including on TikTok by user @levraifoufa on June 29th, 2023 (seen below), where it received over 6.6 million views in less than a day.^[4]

The video showed the paramedic telling the police officer that he had murdered a child and that his actions would lead to a riot. He also tells the police officer that he knows the mother of Nahel Merzouk and that "Nanterre will wake up." The paramedic was arrested for shouting at the police officer and held in custody for a day, but charges against him were later dropped.^[3] Charges were also brought against the person who filmed the video (because it is illegal to give out the personal information of the police in France) but those were dropped as well.

Rioting Across France

In the days and nights after the killing on June 27th, 2023, riots broke out across France and significant damage and violence occurred.^[14] Each night dozens of police officers and rioters were wounded, hundreds of cars and buildings burnt, and millions of euros of damage done.^[6] Rioting took place across the country, with particularly severe instances in major cities. Footage and photos of both the protests and riots in France and various events associated with them circulated widely online in late June 2023 (example seen below). Rioters were recorded shooting fireworks at buildings, looting local businesses and clashing with riot control police, among other actions.^[10]

Footage of the events was circulated on nearly every social media platform, with creators like TikToker @hugodecrypte making compilations, such as one (seen below, left) that earned over 4 million views and almost half a million likes in three days.^[7] The journalism outlet Brut also reported on the situation, publishing a collection of footage to TikTok (seen below, right) showing all the different cities and towns where rioting took place on June 30th, receiving over 9.9 million views in two days.^[11]

Responses By Public Figures

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the killing of Nahel, as did Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. The government also condemned the rioting which followed the killing. Macron said in a statement on June 30th, in response to riots around the country, that "young people in the streets are living out in real life the video games that have intoxicated them," and criticized TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms for a lack of content moderation around inflammatory content (shown below).^[9] This remark was widely criticized online shortly after.

Meanwhile, politicians further to the right of Macron, such as Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, called for harsher measures against the rioters. French football star Kylian Mbappé tweeted about his grief on June 28th, 2023, earning over a quarter of a million likes (seen below) in two days.^[5] Many other French celebrities put out similar messages.

Online Reactions

Videos of events at riots – involving flaming buildings, cars and confrontations with the police – circulated widely in late June 2023, garnering numerous reactions online. Funny or interesting moments also were prominent subjects of posting, as well as jokes about the chaos of French protest culture in general.

For example, on July 2nd, 2023, TikToker^[12] @lekouyonducoins posted one such video that received nearly 90,000 likes in less than a day (seen below, left). Others accumulated collections of Snapchat footage purportedly from the protests, such as @yns3vibes on TikTok, who received almost 83,000 views for one such compilation (seen below right) in the two days after June 30th.^[13]

Various false rumors also spread based on supposedly authentic footage. For example, videos on TikTok of elephants and zebras roaming French neighborhoods spread online. These videos led some to believe that rioters had released zoo animals in the Paris region, but these stories were false.^[8]

Related Events / Memes

2023 French Pension Protests

The 2023 French Pension Protests, also referred to as France Pension Reform Unrest, are an ongoing multi-month series of protests in France that took place in early 2023 due to forced changes in the European country's pension policy by French President Emmanuel Macron. The changes, an increase in the age from 62 to 64 that a citizen is allowed to retire and collect a pension, led to multiple large-scale protests and riots in several parts of Paris, often with mixed results. The controversy and events were covered en masse by media around the world, as well as discussed online across most social media platforms. Various memes about the unrest also appeared online during the protests.

Batman Pulled Up to France

Batman Pulled Up to France refers to a series of memes framing videos of people dressed as Batman as if they were taken at the 2023 Nahel Merzouk France Protests, suggesting Batman had to show up to handle the situation. The meme began in early July 2023 when a video of a Batman impersonator walking through a smoke-covered protest went viral under the context of being taken at the riots, however, the video was actually taken at a 2020 BLM protest at Philadelphia City Hall. As the trend progressed, people began posting videos of other character impersonators in public settings, as if they also pulled up to France.

External References