France protests over police violence and racism spread to Belgium, Switzerland

Days of unrest and rioting in France have spread overnight to neighbouring Switzerland, after spilling over into Belgium earlier in the week.

In the Swiss city of Lausanne, there were clashes between police and groups of protesters, most of them young – an echo of the profile of many of the protestors in France. Seven people were detained, most of them teenagers, after several shop windows in Lausanne were smashed.

Around 100 people gathered on Saturday night in the centre of the city, which is located in the mainly French-speaking western part of Switzerland.

“Quite clearly, what emerges from what we have seen is that these young people during the night were inspired by the situation in France,” a Lausanne police spokesman said.

Swiss police detained six people aged between 15 and 17 — three girls and three boys, who had Portuguese, Somali, Bosnian, Swiss, Georgian and Serbian citizenship. They also detained a 24-year-old Swiss man. No police officers were injured.

On Thursday, about a dozen people were detained in the Belgian capital, Brussels, and several fires were brought under control.

Last week, police brutally killed Nahel Merzouk, a French Algerian teenager after he was stopped at an intersection in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre.

His murder has sparked days of violent protests and nighttime clashes in Paris and other cities against systemic racism and police brutality.

French racism and oppression enabled police killing of Nahel

Despite the fact that police killings in France are on the rise, with the majority of victims being Black or Arab, the reality of systemic racism in France is denied by French authorities under the twin veils of colorblindness and cultural arrogance.

France has a long and sordid history of colonial racism and violence against people racialised as “non-white”, Al Jazeera said in an analysis.

Last week, police brutally killed Nahel M, a French Algerian teenager after he was stopped at an intersection in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre.

His murder has sparked violent protests and nighttime clashes in Paris and other cities against systemic racism and police brutality in France.

In the wake of massive protests, French President Emmanuel Macron called the killing “inexplicable”. But this, too, is yet another French fabrication and a form of persistent denial. Nahel’s death is not an unsolvable mystery – it was the result of systemic racism.

When these kinds of police killings happen in the United States, as they so frequently do, there is often generally acknowledgement in the media and among liberals and leftists that racism is a fundamental cause.

But in France, liberals and leftists often join forces with right-wing extremists to deny the existence of French racism.

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