"但是孩子们，他们听谁的呢？—《毒贩，总统先生》: 埃马纽埃尔·马克龙拜访警察局
"But the kids, who do they listen to? – "The dealers, Mr. President": Emmanuel Macron's visit to the police
“但是孩子们，他们听谁的呢？ – “毒贩，总统先生”：埃马纽埃尔·马克龙拜访警察局
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“当他们最近几天有时经历最糟糕的情况时，我没有对他们感到屈服。 他们的勇气让我们感激不已。”在与警察一起在巴黎度过了四个小时的夜晚后，马克龙吐露道。 从周一到周二，今天晚上将近 1 点 30 分，共和国总统的专车在经历了一个总体上各地区没有发生重大冲突的夜晚后返回爱丽舍宫。 似乎愤怒的情绪已经失去了动力，在南泰尔年轻的纳赫勒之死造成六天的混乱之后，这种秩序正在逐渐恢复到这个国家。
因此，对于悲剧发生后他的第一次实地考察，国家元首并不是在仍处于紧张状态的城市中心保留鼓励和支持的话语，而是与公共力量的代理人一起， 一周的严峻考验。 退出时没有大张旗鼓（没有邀请任何摄像机，也没有邀请总统车队到最低限度，以确保首都有最大的自由裁量权），但坚定地传达了一个信息：“这是一个充满信心和决心的信息，国家支持你。 我理解您的专业精神和要求。 我们与你同在。”晚上 11 点前不久，埃马纽埃尔·马克龙 (Emmanuel Macron) 抵达贝西埃尔军营（17 世纪）时说道，那里有大约 50 名来自 Bac、BRI、CRS 的警察，周围有一杯咖啡在等着他。 来自巴黎的宪兵和消防员。
“ 你好吗 ？ 你坚持住了吗？ »
一周前，当他谴责纳赫尔之死时，然而，对于他们中的一些人来说，当调查刚刚开始、正义尚未伸张时，药丸并没有通过，他们对现有的权力感到失望。 更不用说国民议会的这一分钟默哀，警方认为这是对政治阶层的放任。 “有必要做出一个姿态，表明没有他们，共和权威就一无是处”，总统的一位密友说道。 最近的一项调查并未逃过爱丽舍宫的注意：据费加罗报 Ifop 报道，尽管最近发生了一些事件，但 57% 的法国人重申了对警察的信心。 就像枪杀警察的家人在短短几天内收集到的小猫数量向国家最高层呼吁：超过一百万欧元。
因此，周一晚上，在午夜过后不久，埃马纽埃尔·马克龙 (Emmanuel Macron) 前往警察总部 (Ve) 的视频控制中心，那里有数百个屏幕扫描安装在首都和 RATP 网络上的 18,000 个摄像头。 每天都面临社会暴力。 “ 你好吗 ？ 你坚持住了吗？ “他在与贝西埃军营握手时承诺，陪同的还有内政部长杰拉尔德·达尔马宁和巴黎警察局长洛朗·努涅斯。
对话很容易就解决了。 “十一年来的演习中，我从未见过如此多的迫击炮火。 前两个晚上，他们被用来杀了我们，这是肯定的，”一名警察回答他。 “孩子们，我们抓住他们，然后第二天我们在街上发现他们，那就有问题了”，另一个人说道。 “我们已经增加了法律文本。 现在必须应用它们，”总统坚定地回答道，几分钟前，他还在另一个地方进行了更直接的交流：一场持续一个多小时的秘密会谈。 六名巴克警察在距离克利希门和环路不远的一家小酒馆里。 这次夜间郊游的三个阶段中的第一个阶段是在当天早些时候决定的。
“我们不再吓唬他们了”
马克龙手里拿着啤酒，边听边提问。 会议中有时会出现几秒钟的白人，他们很难掩饰坐在他对面、穿着过于装备的男人所感到的不适。 “现在，每次发生事情，即使是一场足球比赛，我们都知道它会这样结束。 他们利用它来打破。 至于我们，我们不再吓唬他们了，”其中一位哀叹道。 “对于父母责任的呼吁，这有影响吗？ “国家元首问道。 “不幸的是没有，”一名警察回答道。 他的对话者想了解更多：“但是孩子们，他们听谁的呢？ ”。 “总统先生，经销商们。 这两天一直要求他们冷静，因为所有这些混乱正在损害他们的生意。 毒品交易已经一周没有好转了。
几分钟后，另一个人讲述了当警察到达他们家逮捕他们的未成年孩子时，他不再感到惊讶地看到父母“坐在扶手椅上，坐在用毒品钱支付的大屏幕前”。 然后，一位同事指出这些日益暴力的年轻人，以及这种每天都被视为监禁威胁的“对法国的仇恨”，这不再令人恐惧：“在那里，在监狱里，他们所有的电视频道都在做健美运动。 ，然后大众获得并脱胎换骨”，一名警察感叹道。 马克龙毫不掩饰自己的困惑：“2005年的骚乱期间，有一个信息。 在那里，我没有听到任何消息”，他沮丧地承认，同时强调“我们从未像过去十五年那样为社区做了这么多”。
“我们应该能够对初犯的家庭进行经济制裁”
突然，透过专门为这次活动而私有的小酒馆的有色窗户，一名年轻人认出了总统，并向他挥手致意。 后者微笑着举起手来回答他。 但当这名男孩很快被其中一名“baqueux”认出时，场景就变得怪诞了。 “啊，前两天他向我们扔了迫击炮！ 桌子周围不舒服。 接下来就是寻找解决方案的时候了。 一位经纪人建议说：“你必须掏出钱包，这是唯一有效的方法。” “为什么不呢，但要根据具体情况而定，而不一定是通过家庭津贴。 在第一次犯罪时，我们应该能够在经济上轻松地制裁这些家庭。 一种从第一次废话中得出的最低利率，”总统大声地想道。
马克龙知道，路还很长。 他意识到两天的平静可能只是短暂的喘息：“我不认为它已经过去了。 我们将看看 7 月 13 日和 14 日将会发生什么（在国庆节之际，人们担心会出现新的紧张局势），然后再看看接下来的几个月”。 在那之前，向警察和宪兵发出的信息仍然是一样的：“保持高度警惕”
"But the kids, who do they listen to? – "The dealers, Mr. President": Emmanuel Macron's visit to the police
“But the kids, who do they listen to? – “The dealers, Mr. President”: Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the police
“In none of them I felt resignation when they have sometimes gone through the worst in recent days. Their courage obliges us, ”confides Emmanuel Macron after a four-hour Parisian night getaway with the police. It is almost 1:30 this night from Monday to Tuesday, when the car of the President of the Republic returns to the Élysée Palace after an evening which, overall, passed without major clashes in the districts. As if the movement of anger was running out of steam, that order was gradually returning to the country after six days of chaos caused by the death of young Nahel in Nanterre.
For his first field trip since this tragedy, it is therefore not in the heart of the cities – still under tension – that the Head of State wanted to reserve his words of encouragement and support, but with the agents of the public force, subjected to severe test for a week. An exit without fanfare (not the slightest camera invited and a presidential motorcade reduced to a minimum to ensure the greatest discretion in the capital), but with the firm intention of sending a message: “A message of confidence, determination state to support you. I understand the professionalism and the requirement that is yours. We are with you, ”says Emmanuel Macron shortly before 11 p.m., when he arrives at the Bessières barracks (17th century), where around a coffee are waiting for him around fifty police officers from the Bac, the BRI, the CRS, as well as gendarmes and firefighters from Paris.
” How are you ? Are you holding up? »
A week ago, when he condemned the death of Nahel, the pill did not pass, however, for some of them who felt let down by the power in place, when the investigation had barely begun and justice has not passed yet. Even less this minute of silence in the National Assembly, perceived by the police as a letting go of the political class. “It was necessary to make a gesture, to show that without them the republican authority is nothing”, deciphers a confidant of the president. A recent survey has not escaped the Elysée: 57% of French people reiterate their confidence in the police according to Ifop for Le Figaro, despite recent events. Just like the amount of the kitty collected in just a few days for the family of the policeman who killed the shot calls out to the top of the state: more than a million euros.
So Monday evening, before going shortly after midnight to the video control center of the police headquarters (Ve), where hundreds of screens scan the 18,000 cameras installed in the capital and on the RATP network, Emmanuel Macron took the time to discuss with those who are daily confronted with violence in society. ” How are you ? Are you holding up? “, he undertakes, shaking hands with the Bessières barracks, accompanied by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez.
Easily, the dialogue settles. “In eleven years of exercise, I have never seen so many mortar fires. The first two evenings, they were used to kill us, that’s for sure,” a policeman returns to him. “The kids, we catch them, then the next day we find them in the street, there is a problem”, launches another. “We have multiplied the texts of laws. Now they have to be applied, ”replies the president firmly who, a few moments earlier, had engaged in an even more direct exchange in another place: a confidential tête-à-tête lasting more than an hour. with six Bac police officers in a brasserie located not far from Porte de Clichy and the ring road. First of the three stages of this night outing decided a few hours earlier in the day.
“We don’t scare them anymore”
A beer in hand, Macron listened to them as much as he asked questions. A meeting sometimes interspersed with a few seconds of white people who had difficulty in masking the discomfort felt by the men seated opposite him, and in over-equipped clothing. “Now, every time something happens, even a football match, we know it’s going to end like this. They take advantage of it to break. As for us, we no longer scare them, ”laments one of them. “And the call for parental responsibility, does that have an impact? “Asks the head of state. “Unfortunately not,” replied a policeman. His interlocutor wants to know more: “But the kids, who do they listen to then? “. “The dealers, Mr. President. They are the ones who have been asking them to calm down for two days, because all this mess is damaging their business. It’s been a week that the narcotics traffic does not turn.
A few minutes later, another tells how he is no longer surprised to see parents “stay in their armchairs and in front of their big screen paid for with drug money”, while the police arrive at their home to arrest their minor child. Then a colleague noted these increasingly violent young people, but also this “hatred of France” perceived on a daily basis, as the threat of incarceration which is no longer frightening: “Over there, in prison, they all the TV channels, do bodybuilding, then mass gain and come out transformed”, laments a policeman. Emmanuel Macron, he does not hide his perplexity: “During the riots of 2005, there was a message. There, I didn’t hear a message”, he admits in dismay, while emphasizing “that we have never done so much for the neighborhoods as in the last fifteen years”.
“We should be able to financially sanction the families on the first offense”
Suddenly, through the tinted window of the brasserie privatized for the occasion, a young person recognizes the president and waves to him. Smile and raised hand, the latter answers him. But the scene becomes grotesque when the boy in question is quickly identified by one of the “baqueux”. “Ah, he threw mortars at us two days ago! Discomfort around the table. Then comes the time to find solutions. “You have to hit the wallet, that’s the only thing that works”, suggests one of the agents. “Why not, but on a case-by-case basis, and not necessarily through family allowances. At the first offence, we should be able to financially and easily sanction the families. A sort of minimum rate from the first bullshit, ”thinks the president aloud.
Emmanuel Macron knows it, the road will be long. As he is aware that the lull observed for two days may only be a short-lived respite: “I do not consider that it is behind us. We will see what the 13th and 14th of July will already give (on the occasion of the national holiday when new tensions are to be feared), and again the months to come”. Until then, the message to the police and gendarmerie remains the same: “Stay on high alert”
巴黎警察告诉马克龙：对年轻人来说，毒贩的话可能比家长和警察“好使”
阮佳琪 2023-07-05 观察者网
https://www.guancha.cn/internation/2023_07_05_699655.shtml?s=zwyzxw
（观察者网讯）综合法国《巴黎人报》、《自由南方报》等当地时间4日报道，周一（3日）晚法国总统马克龙突访巴黎警察总部，向连日来负责控制骚乱的警方表达支持和慰问。
Mais Les gamins, ils ecoutent qui
而在交谈中，马克龙却被警察的一句话说懵了。对方苦恼地告诉他，如今警察甚至父母都对年轻人没有威慑力了，能够“管”住他们的居然是毒贩，“事实上这两天也是毒贩要求示威者冷静点，骚乱影响到毒品生意了。”
报道称，马克龙在听到这一情况后“难掩困惑”，法媒“Atlantico.fr”亦评价双方这段对话“引人深思”。
据法媒报道，当天行程是自当地时间6月27日全法骚乱发生以来法国总统马克龙首次出访，这次安排并未提前宣布。
7月3日深夜，他和法内政部长达尔马宁一同前往巴黎第17区警察局和巴黎警察局总部，向警察和宪兵表示感谢和慰问，“这是国家支持你们的信心和决心的信号，我们欣赏你们的专业精神和高标准，我们与你们同在。”
报道称，马克龙手里拿着啤酒，一边和警察们交谈。
图自《巴黎人报》
期间一位警察向他抱怨：”现在，但凡有事情发生，哪怕只是一场足球比赛，我们都知道会有这样（骚乱）的结局，他们会趁机砸烂一切。至于我们，已经吓唬不到他们了。”
“那我呼吁父母要负起监管责任会对这种情况带来改善吗？”马克龙这么问道，但得到了否定的答案，“遗憾的是，并没有。”
他紧接着问“那孩子们现在都听谁的话呢”，却得到了一个更出人预料的答案，“毒贩，我的总统先生。事实上，这两天是他们在要求示威者冷静点，因为这些骚乱已经妨碍到他们做生意了，毒品生意已经有一个礼拜没有开张了。”
另一名警察也接话称，现在他们去别人家里逮捕那些未成年孩子时，看到他们的父母窝在扶手椅上，坐在用毒资买来的大电视前都不再感到惊讶了。
法媒描述称，马克龙听闻后“难掩满脸困惑”，随后“沮丧”地承认了现状，同时强调法国政府“从未像过去15年那样为社区做过如此之多的努力”。
法国《进步报》曾指出，法国是欧洲最大的大麻消费国，一份2021年公布的数据显示，15岁至64岁的法国人中大麻吸食率达到了44.8%，即1800万人至少使用过一次大麻。法国青少年更深受毒品毒害，吸毒比例高达16%，远高于欧洲7.1%的平均水平。
法国政府虽然一直出台相应政策的打击贩毒，但成效甚微。马赛、兰斯、南特、利摩日等城市接连卷入毒贩抢夺地盘的黑帮暴力血腥活动不说，甚至重燃“大麻合法化”在该国的讨论。
2016年，法国首家“吸毒室”在巴黎投入使用，吸毒者可在专人监督下注射毒品并接受治疗
正当众人沉默时，更为戏剧性的一幕发生了：窗外一个年轻人看到了马克龙并向他挥手打招呼，马克龙也微笑回应。
然而这个男孩很快被同桌警察认出，“前两天就是他朝我们扔燃烧瓶的！”，现场气氛在这句话后变得更“怪异”了……
法媒报道称，警察们随后向马克龙建议对参与骚乱的未成年人处以罚款，这是他们认为唯一有可能奏效的解决办法。
马克龙虽然表现得很谨慎，但没有拒绝这一提议，“我们需要找到一种在经济上比较容易操作的，惩罚这些家庭的方法”，“这算是（他们）第一次犯错应该付出的最低的代价”。
据《巴黎人报》此前报道，法内政部长达尔马宁曾披露被逮捕骚乱者的平均年龄为17岁，年纪最小的只有12、13岁。法司法部5日最新数据显示，自6月30日起共逮捕了3915人，其中1244人是未成年人。
马克龙此前在讲话中曾指责社交媒体和电子游戏在此次事件中起到了煽动民众情绪的作用，尤其是对未成年人。他敦促家长担负监管责任禁止孩子上街参加示威活动，同时要求社媒平台删除敏感内容。
他说，“父母有责任让他们（参与骚乱的青少年）待在家里”，而“代替父母行事不是国家的职责”。
法司法部长莫雷蒂也警告称，骚乱人群的年轻化令人担忧，未成年骚乱者的父母也可能被追究责任，虽然他们可以在涉事孩子造成损害后支付赔偿金，但如果不履行应尽责任，这些家长仍可能面临两年监禁和3万欧元罚款。
另据法新社报道，马克龙4日在总统府爱丽舍宫会见受到骚乱影响的241位市镇官员时表示，法国持续数天的骚乱“高峰期”已过去，但在未来几周仍需保持谨慎。《巴黎人报》称，前一天他曾表示关键节点在7月13日或14日，也就是法国国庆节前夕和当天，才能最终确定局势。
马克龙说，当务之急是恢复国家秩序，政府将提出“紧急法”草案，向受骚乱影响的城市提供财政援助，加快骚乱后的重建工作，特别是修复被毁坏的建筑物、街道设施和公共交通设施。此外，政府正在考虑加强社交网络的监管措施，未来不排除在发生危机时“切断社交网络的可能性”。
'We are seen as less human' : inside Marseille's districts abandoned by the police
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/01/we-are-seen-as-less-human-inside-marseilles-quartiers-that-the-police-have-abandoned?
In 2021 Emmanuel Macron promised victims of the city’s drug crime he would help. Grieving residents tell how he failed them
Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.
Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.
Wassida Kessaci had decided not to join the crowd monitoring the French president’s trip to Marseille last week. Partly because Macron disappointed her; partly because she had been visiting Busserine too often of late.
Most recently on 24 April, when she met a mother whose teenage son was shot in the head as he sat on a sofa, metres from where the French president now held court. Weeks earlier, she comforted another mother of a young man whose blackened body was found in the locked boot of a torched car. “All this in the same place where Macron was speaking,” she said.
Community campaigner Amine Kessaci and his mother, Wassida, have been working to improve conditions on Marseille’s council estates. Photograph: Gregoire Bernardi/Hans Lucas for the Observer
As evening approached on Monday, Macron continued with his vision for the quartiers nord, the deprived swath of the city that contained Busserine. Outside, the jostling continued. More officers arrived.
Within the gym, Kessaci’s 19-year-old French-Algerian son, Amine, asked Macron if he intended to reintroduce community policing to repair the broken relationship between Marseille’s north African heritage community and an increasingly aloof, militarised force.
Amine spoke with urgency, reflecting the anguish he had encountered since Macron last came to Marseille in 2021.
Since then Amine and his mother had visited 55 grief-stricken families from the quartiers nord, each having lost a child to the city’s unrelenting drug wars. Both knew the tempo of killings and the levels of brutality were accelerating. But Macron offered little in response. “He didn’t really answer,” said Amine.
The president of France could say he had ventured into the notorious cités – council estates – that dominate the north of Marseille, but everyone knew he hadn’t, at least not properly.
French president Emmanuel Macron speaks during a public meeting with residents in the Busserine district of Marseille on Friday. Photograph: Reuters
Instead, Busserine’s residents joked about the mammoth police presence required to guarantee Macron’s safety.
“So that’s where all the police are hiding. How many does one man need?” shouted Hamid, 18.
The presidential convoy would never learn firsthand that just hundreds of metres away, parts of the Marseille road network were no longer governed by the state. Access routes to nearby estates were shut by roadblocks controlled by drug gangs, who decided who came and went – pockets of France’s second city surrendered to traffickers.
As questions mount over levels of racial profiling by French police in the wake of the shooting in Nanterre, Marseille serves as a warning of what happens when the police lose control – or abandon – a community.
More broadly, the port is seen as a litmus test for France; if its most multicultural city can foster vast Muslim enclaves viewed with broad suspicion or hostility by the police, then what hope is there elsewhere?
For many, it came as little surprise that the southern port city witnessed some of the fiercest rioting on Friday night, when 88 people were arrested, a gun shop looted and police engaged in running battles with what they called “violent groups”.
Fearing the worst is yet to come, Marseille’s mayor has urged the government to immediately send more troops to help retain control.
Speaking hours after the video first began circulating of the shooting of the teenager named as Nahel M in a Paris suburb on Tuesday, Amine said the police had already lost all credibility among the residents of Marseille’s cités.
Heavily armed officers occasionally poured into the estates in huge numbers, said Amine, before rapidly retreating, having dished out fines to passersby.
“They come for a few hours and fine everybody for lack of insurance or stupid things. Yet if they put 20 police all day and night in front of the traffickers, it would stop the violence.”
Joseph Downing, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations, who grew up on a London council estate and lives in Marseille, where he has studied the relationship between the cités and police, said it is impossible for Britons to grasp how awful the estates are.
“In terms of the disrepair of the housing stock, the absence of the state – the absence of anybody – we can’t comprehend it’s possible.
“The police are even scared to go there – for us this is unthinkable. These places are literally outside the state. If you call the police as a resident, they will not come.”
Setting Marseille slightly apart from other French cities is the proliferation of Kalashnikovs owned by gangs within the estates, a deadly variable that Downing said offers another excuse for police to swerve such places.
Rafiq, another teenage Busserine resident, added: “They are happy for Arabs to kill one another – for the police, it’s one less Arab.”
The bottom line is that almost two years since Macron last visited Marseille and unveiled a grand plan to improve conditions in the cités, relations with the police and security have both deteriorated dramatically.
Last year a record 32 people were killed in score-settling by the city’s drug gangs. Already this year there have been 23 murders, with more than 50 wounded.
Amine, like everyone else in the quartiers nord, is in no doubt the violence has never been worse.
“It’s become very violent. It’s happening near schools; we have collateral victims all the time – the victims are getting younger.”
Standing like monoliths in front of the Provençal hills that encircle Marseille, the brutalist tower blocks of Frais Vallon constitute its biggest and arguably grimmest cité.
Here, about 7,000 people – average age 36 and mostly of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian descent – are crammed into a slither of land hemmed in by motorways.
By Tuesday evening, most of them had seen the footage of Nahel M, who came from a similar high-rise estate in Nanterre, being shot at point-blank range.
Groups of teenagers – known as choufs, the Arabic word for “watchman”, and the lowest rung of gang hierarchy – became animated as they stared at their phones.
By the nearby stairwell of a decrepit 23-storey tower block, a group of “soldiers” stood by one of Frais Vallon’s brazen selling points for cannabis and cocaine. Somewhere inside were the “managers”, who organise the supply of drugs and stash the AK-47 assault rifles.
Above them, invisible, stand the grands barons, stationed in north Africa, occasionally the UK and increasingly Dubai.
The police were nowhere to be seen. Near the selling point, one of Frais Vallon’s first-ever residents approached.uartie
Abdi arrived in 1961 to be reassured her concrete high-rise was temporary accommodation. “It was a place to crash, not a place where I thought I’d be 60 years later,” she said. The 74-year-old accused the state of forgetting about Frais Vallon, allowing it to be taken over by drug cartels.
For the first time since arriving, Abdi wants to return to Tunisia. “It’s become too dangerous. I need to leave and take my 19-year-old grandson to save him,” she said
Amine was born in Frais-Vallon in 2004 and watched as the drugs networks became the dominant employer on the quartiers nord, where youth unemployment can reach 70%.
Out of his former classmates, the teenager can name about 50 who work for the drug gangs. Another 10 are in prison.
Amine beckoned the Observer deeper into the estate, stepping over a dead rat on the pavement, towards the second-floor flat where he grew up. “There,” he said, pointing to a boarded-up window. “That was once the police station on our block, holding 10 officers who everybody knew. Police would play with the children, know who was up to no good, who had begun keeping bad company.”
Amine said it was no surprise that the station’s closure more than 10 years ago coincided with the rapid expansion of Frais Vallon’s organised criminals.“The police allowed the small-time players to grow bigger, to become international,” said Amine.
The vacuum of effective policing has also allowed a twisted cycle of brutality to fester; ferocious violence that Amine knows too well.
On 29 December 2020 his brother disappeared. For six days his mother scoured the city until tipped off that the 21-year-old would not be coming home.
Brahim Kessaci was found beside another body in the boot of a burned- out car on a road heading out of the city. A third body had been sliced into pieces with a chainsaw and images sent to his traumatised father.
“Without realising, Brahim became friends with someone who was a target. I had brought my kids up to be trusting. I regret that,” said Wassida Kessaci.
Several months before his brother’s death, Amine had set up Association Conscience, a grassroots organisation that demanded better opportunities for young people in the quartiers nord.
His brother’s death shifted its focus to tackling what lay behind Marseille’s soaring youth violence. For the last two years, he has visited dozens of grieving families of victims, most of them barely out of school.
“When I hear about a shooting, I go to give my condolences. At first, it was really hard, but now it’s so frequent, sometimes three times a week. It’s become so normal. I don’t even cry any more.”Often Kessaci volunteers to help inconsolable mothers deal with their loss.
“At the moment I have five who refuse to leave their house,” she said. One has the dried blood of her teenage son on her doorstep, murdered moments after they ate couscous together.
Even the mere mention of the word “barbecue”, or the waft of sizzling meat on a warm evening, can prompt suicidal thoughts for some of the mothers. A “Marseille barbecue” refers to a common gangland killing, where, like Kessaci’s son Brahim, a target is burned, sometimes alive, inside a vehicle.
“Hearing the word ‘barbecue’ causes huge trauma to mothers, some turn to alcohol or drugs. One received a Snapchat of her son’s burned remains.” Each killing leads inevitably to another.
Another grieving mother, Rahem Fana, said the boy who murdered her only son was himself killed a fortnight later.“Nobody knows why, what happened,” she said, blinking back tears. “I no longer have a taste for life. It’s not possible to overcome this pain.”
Fana’s son was stabbed to death on 26 July 2022 by a boy, known to the police, who was jealous of the girl he had dated since he was 14. The police did nothing. Eventually, Kessaci contacted them to at least look into the killing, but still received no response.
Fana said: “They made me feel unworthy. Because I am Muslim, I feel judged, treated differently, less deserving.” Kessaci nodded and added: “We are seen as less human.”
On Friday the United Nations said the unrest sweeping France was an opportunity for its police to “address deep issues of racism”.
Back in Frais Vallon, it was evident that treating its residents as second-class citizens guaranteed a stead supply of young recruits for the trafficking networks.
A battered car was waved down by Amine; inside was a good friend of his murdered brother. “Most of us really want to work,” said the friend. “I’ve applied for so many jobs, even a street cleaner, but was rejected because of my address and because of my [Arabic] name.
“I know friends who receive three rejections and just join the trafficking gangs. It’s dangerous, you might die, but people need something.”
Downing said that another attraction is that in such a discriminatory society, the criminal underworld of Marseille operates as a comparative meritocracy. “Unlike French society that will look down on you for being an Arab, or black, in the criminal world, as long as you’re a decent thief, you’re a decent thief,” he said.
When Amine questioned Macron last week, the teenager might have expected a better response. After all, during the president’s previous trip, Macron was so impressed with the teenager’s determination to help the quartiers nord that the president subsequently invited him to the Élysée Palace to discuss ideas.
Aged just 17 - the same age as Nahel M when shot by French police last week - Amine also received condolences over the death of his brother from Macron’s wife, Brigitte.
His mother also got the five-star treatment during Macron’s previous trip to the port.
“He took my hand and congratulated me for Amine,” she said, noting the irony of someone who had survived decades in the quartiers nord being allocated a bodyguard during the visit.
This time around, she was in no rush to see him. Macron, she said, had indicated their organisation would receive €30,000 but only €10,000 materialised.
His promise to send hundreds of elite police to Marseille did happen, though with apparent little impact. As the failure to adequately police the cités unfolded, trust with their residents collapsed and the flow of vital intelligence to officers dwindled to a trickle.
Within the high-density estates, everybody knows their neighbour. In Marseille, every grieving mother quickly learns who killed their child.
“Every time we know. All the families even know where the weapons are hidden. If the police wanted to solve the killings, they could – the simple fact is they don’t,” said Kessaci .
The lack of police intervention means that bereaved families remain living in the same building as the men they know murdered their son. So far, Amine’s organisation has managed to move 20 mourning families from tower blocks where they would routinely bump into the people who killed their brother or son.
In Brahim’s case, his mother said that only a multitude of tip-offs from the cités encouraged police to act - placing bugs in the cars of the suspected killers, which quickly recorded a confession.
Last week, Amine also asked Macron if he intended to legalise the cannabis trade, a move many feel would promptly destabilise the ever-powerful drug gangs.
Many of Marseille’s victims of violence are killed over the cannabis in a country that is the biggest consumer of the drug in Europe, despite having some of its most repressive laws.
“He didn’t want to talk about cannabis legalisation. But it’s a basic topic that we need to discuss. We’ve lost the war against cannabis – it’s time to legalise it,” said Amine.
Many in the cités view Amine as a mayor of Marseille in waiting. He has stiff competition. Macron has already suggested he would like to one day take the top job in France’s second city. For now, he must contend with nationwide riots that expose a France fractured on race and religion.
For Amine, the events of last week underline his call for community policing and the hope that, at some stage, teenagers such as himself and Nahel M are viewed without fear or prejudice.
