Voice of the unheard This is the price of ignoring decades of racist police violence

Since the video went viral of the brutal killing by a police officer of Nahel M, a 17-year-old shot dead at point-blank range, the streets and housing estates of many poorer French neighbourhoods have been in a state of open revolt. 

- Rokhaya Diallo

"France faces George Floyd moment," I read in the international media, as if we were suddenly waking up to the issue of racist police violence. This naive comparison itself reflects a denial of the systemic racist violence that for decades has been inherent to French policing.

I first became involved in antiracist campaigning after a 2005 event that had many parallels with the killing of Nahel. Three teenagers aged between 15 and 17 were heading home one afternoon after playing football with friends when they were suddenly pursued by police. Although they had done nothing wrong, these terrified youngsters, these children, hid in an electricity substation. Two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted. The third, Muhittin Altun, suffered appalling burns and life-changing injuries.

Those boys could have been my little brothers, or my younger cousins. I remember the sense of incredulity: how could they simply lose their lives to such terrible injustice? "If they go in there [to the power plant], I don't fancy their chances of making it" were the chilling words spoken by one of the watching police officers.