In a suburb of Paris, riots erupted due to police brutality against ethnic minorities who do not respect the quarantine regime extended by a recent decree of President Makron until 11 May.
The immediate cause of the outrage was an incident involving a 30-year-old local man injured in a collision with a police car.
On the night of Monday, April 20, police angry people staged a riot in the small town of Villeneuve la Garenne in the region of O de Saint, about ten kilometers north-west of the centre of the French capital. Video footage posted on social media shows protesters launching fireworks at police stations, throwing stones and setting garbage cans on fire. Law enforcement officials, in turn, dispersed their opponents with batons and used tear gas.
One of the reasons for the riot in the Parisian suburbs was an incident in which a 30-year-old motorcyclist crashed at full speed into the open door of an unmarked police car in Vilnièv-la-Garenne and sustained serious injuries to his leg. The city prosecutor’s office has already investigated the case.
Locals claim that the car door was specially opened to stop the motorcyclist. Police say they tried to prevent a high-speed biker from colliding with their car. The victim was successfully operated on at the hospital and promised to sue the perpetrators of his injury. Meanwhile, this young man is well known to the police and has been repeatedly prosecuted for various offences, according to media reports.
Local police officials said they “targeted the rebels, who threw stones and firewers at them. They also added that the riots that have begun in Villev-la-Garenne threaten to spread beyond this Parisian suburb to other French cities and regions. And somewhere – apparently without a direct link to the Villeville events – it is already happening.
Let us recall that on the evening of April 13, French President Emmanuelle Macron addressed the people and announced the extension of the isolation regime in force from March 17 until May 11.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths from the Covid-19 in France has fallen. On Sunday 19 April, it was the lowest number of deaths in three weeks, with 395 deaths per day. According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 154 thousand cases of infection of a new type have been registered in the country. At the same time France is on the third place in the world – more than 19 thousand people died from the dangerous virus.