- French soccer stars have spoken out about the race issues behind the police killing of a 17-year-old.
- Their response contrasts sharply with the country's political leaders, an anti-racism activist said.
Days after Nahel Merzouk, a French teenager of Moroccan and Algerian descent, was shot and killed at point blank range by a French police officer during a traffic stop, collective anger has boiled over and influential figures in France have sought to shift the goalposts in the national conversation.
Largely, French soccer players have spoken out more forcefully than powerful actors in France, who have missed another opportunity to address the elephant in the room. Those hoping for swift social change will be disappointed that real conversations around racism and police brutality have been stifled by France's political class, said Nabil Sanaullah, a spokesperson for the NGO the European Network Against Racism.
"It's a shame that we have to look to football players as examples for our politicians to follow in terms of how they should address the issue," Sanaullah told Insider.
As French politicians have focused on the optics of the destruction of property and less on the root causes of racism and police brutality, Kylian Mbappe, the captain of France's soccer team and the son of Algerian and Cameroonian immigrants, shared a press release on behalf of the French national soccer team.
Yet his comments were "just a continuation of the same 'business as usual' attitude we have already seen," Sanaullah said. "There is no real political intention to drive any substantial change within French society."
Some players were more critical about police brutality
On an international level, French officials have rejected accusations from the UN about systemic racism in their police forces, per Le Monde.
Through the escalating protests, Paris officials have claimed that the protests have left Paris' public transit system with $20 million in damage, per France 24.
Tens of thousands of riot cops have been deployed, and thousands of protestors have been arrested — most of them teenagers — while two of France's police unions have called protestors "savages" and "pests," according to the Guardian.
President Emmanuel Macron's comments have encapsulated what Sanaullah described as France's colorblind attitude towards race. Macron called Merzouk's killing "unacceptable," but refused to say that the shooting had to do with race in a predominantly Black and North African suburb. In a show of both-sideism, Macron called the ensuing riots "unjustifiable."
Some players from the French national soccer team, on the other hand, addressed the issue head on, without mincing words.
"A bullet in the head...It's always for the same people that being in the wrong leads to death," French goalkeeper Mike Maignan tweeted after Merzouk's death.
French defender Jules Kounde was more direct.
"As if this latest police blunder wasn't enough, the 24-hour news channels are taking advantage of it by making a big fuss," Kounde tweeted. "The 'journalists' ask 'questions' with the sole aim of distorting the truth, criminalizing the victim and finding extenuating circumstances where none exist. An age-old method for masking the real problem."
The sentiment was shared by young French midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni, who said that he heard his mother's voice in Nahel's mother's cries for her son after he was killed.
In an open letter twitter thread criticizing police brutality and French media coverage of the protests, Tchouameni questioned the regularity of racialized police violence, the double standard of critiquing racism in France, and asked for solutions.
Underneath each of the players' tweets, fans thanked them for speaking up.
But France's biggest soccer star issued a lukewarm joint statement with the team
Those seeking change in France could also be disappointed with the joint statement issued by team captain Kylian Mbappe, which appeared to appeal to a broad audience — and ultimately lay some onus on the protestors.
Mbappe said that the team was "marked and shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel," in the joint statement released last Friday, according to Le Monde. "Since this tragic event, we have been witnessing the expression of popular anger whose substance we understand, but whose form we cannot endorse."
"But on top of this suffering, there is a feeling of being powerless that can turn into self-destruction. Violence solves nothing, even less when it inevitably and tirelessly turns itself against those who express it, their families, loved ones and neighbors," the statement said. "It is your property that you are destroying, your neighborhoods, your cities, your places of fulfillment."
The statement reflected the kind of temperance and civility around critical conversations about racism in France, and the onus placed on people other than politicians to speak out, Sanaullah said.
"The riots we see today are the result of decades of abuse felt by communities who have felt ignored and denied their basic human rights to live safely for too long," Sanaullah said.
Mbappe's diplomatic approach in the joint statement in part misses the mark without asking the French government to acknowledge and change the status quo, which is sure to let protestors down.
"Mbappe's statement seems to place the responsibility on the communities impacted to seek solutions, yet that responsibility is actually on the government," Sanaullah added.