One year after a French teenager with North African origins was killed by police — a shooting that sparked shock and days of rioting across France — his mother led a silent march Saturday to pay homage to her son, reports Yahoo! News.
It comes at a politically fraught time. Hate speech is blighting the campaign for snap parliamentary elections taking place this weekend, and an anti-immigration party that wants to boost police powers to use their weapons, and has historic ties to racism and antisemitism is leading in the polls.
Several hundred family members, friends and supporters gathered in the Paris suburb of Nanterre to remember 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, who was shot dead at point-blank range by a police officer at a traffic check on June 27, 2023.
Within hours of his death, Merzouk, a delivery driver from a working-class neighborhood, became a symbol. For many across France, he was the embodiment of young French Black and North African men who, studies show, face police checks and discrimination more frequently than their white counterparts.
At Sunday's march, his mother Mounia spoke to the crowd then broke off in tears. Friends wore white t-shirts with Merzouk’s photo, and fellow residents of his housing project held a banner reading “Justice for Nahel.”
Read more of this report from Yahoo! News.
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