French immigrants face high level of segregation, surveillance, contempt: Journalist

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

Young French immigrants face alarming levels of segregation as well as surveillance and contempt from the security state, says a prominent journalist and documentary filmmaker.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Max Blumenthal, a US-based journalist, author and filmmaker, said he is “familiar” with the conditions to which young French immigrants are subjected as the co-author of a 2015 documentary on structural racism and Islamophobia in France, Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie.

Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie was made by Blumenthal and James Kleinfeld after they traveled to Paris in the summer of 2015 and spoke to a cross-section of Paris residents to examine the level of racism and Islamophobia in the French capital in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack.

The debate about structural racism in France has been reignited in the wake of the murder of a teenage boy by French police last week, which triggered angry and widespread protests across the country.

Nahel M., 17, was shot and killed point-blank by French police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, a crime filmed and shared widely online, leading to demonstrations and nationwide calls for justice.

French police alleged that the slain boy committed traffic violations, endangered pedestrians, and drove without a license. Evidence, however, scoffs at those claims and points to Nahel’s innocence.

Blumenthal said the latest round of violent protests was triggered by “legitimate outrage at another act of state repression”, but added that “there is little political direction among the youth in the streets.”

“Already, (Marine) Le Pen and the far right have been strengthened and while (Emmanuel) Macron himself may have been weakened, this is a boon for the security services and police,” he told the Press TV website.

“It goes without saying that the leftist anti-Macron forces gathered around (Jean-Luc) Melenchon will be substantially weakened as the French middle-class clamors for law and order.”

From an international perspective, he added, the “social destabilization” in France “exposes the obvious hypocrisy of the trans-Atlantic elements that salivated over the brief armed rebellion of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia, yearning for that county to descend into bloody civil war.”

“US cable networks and mainstream papers that dedicated days of nonstop coverage to Prigozhin are treating the descent of France into anarchy as a humdrum affair and buried coverage at the bottom of their websites,” Blumenthal noted.

Meanwhile, President Macron is slated to meet the leaders of the two houses of the French parliament on Monday as protests rage on across the country over the teenager’s killing by police.

According to French media reports, police made only 49 arrests on Sunday, down from 719 arrests on Saturday and 1,300 on Friday, but angry protesters continue to call for justice against police brutality.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk