France police shooting: Country haunted by the prospect of a repeat of 2005 riots
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Transcript
00:00 from France's president, to the interior minister,
00:04 to the government's spokesperson.
00:07 The French government stressing the need for calm
00:10 in the wake of the police shooting in Nanterre.
00:13 They want to prevent another serious crisis,
00:16 like the ones that unfolded after similar events,
00:18 when French police were implicated
00:20 in the deaths of minors
00:22 and the Paris suburbs erupted into flames.
00:27 On October 27, 2005, in the eastern suburb of Clichy-sur-Bois,
00:31 the deaths of two teenage boys triggered a spiral of violence.
00:35 Their names, Ziad and Buna, both died by electrocution
00:39 after climbing onto a transformer
00:41 while trying to escape a police check.
00:44 Riots broke out, clashes with police,
00:46 and the situation became so tense
00:48 that then-president Jacques Chirac
00:50 declared a rare state of emergency.
00:53 During 21 days of rioting, hundreds of millions of euros
00:57 worth of property was damaged.
01:00 Just two years later, in 2007,
01:02 the northern Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel
01:05 was the site of public violence
01:07 that spread through the region for two weeks.
01:09 The match that lit the fuse was the death of two teenagers,
01:13 killed after a national police vehicle hit their motorcycle.
01:17 Today, France's leaders are in crisis mode.
01:20 They know how riots such as these can spread,
01:23 damage property, and erode trust in police,
01:26 and want to avoid at all costs a repeat in 2023.