By Catherine Brown
Anti-racist activists warned that the new right government of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur would step up attacks on immigrants. Within two weeks of its appointment, four young immigrants were shot by French police. Three are dead and were in police custody at the time, the youngest only 15.
On April 8, Balladur outlined new restrictions on automatic French nationality, stricter conditions of entry, more random identity checks and a clampdown on working illegal immigrants.
A week earlier, Charles Pasqua was appointed interior minister, a position he held in the right's 1986-8 government. Pasqua was responsible then for ordering huge police sweeps against immigrants. Pasqua defended the police against charges of brutality (including the murder of a student at a demonstration), even extending their powers to expel immigrants without judicial control.
Paris' Gouette d'Or district is home to immigrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In early April, four "anti-delinquent" sweeps of the area involved systematic police harassment of immigrants, particularly young ones. Mass identity checks on any non-whites, with a pretext of a drug crackdown, allowed police to detain dozens of suspected illegal immigrants.
Nakome, from Zaire and only 17, was just one of those taken into police custody. Within hours he was dead, shot in the head by an inspector who claimed he was "only trying to frighten the boy". Another immigrant, 15 years old, was shot in the back by police, who claim the officer was aiming at the tyre of the car the boy had allegedly stolen.
Four days of rioting followed the deaths, as growing anger flowed onto the streets. This sparked what was officially described as the heaviest police presence since the 1986 student protests.
Human rights groups received reports of beatings of protesters in police vehicles and stations. Even onlooking tourists were assaulted by police.
French police already had a reputation for brutality. A European Commission on prevention of torture said in January that suspects in France ran a "not inconsiderable" risk of mistreatment in police custody. It urged the then Socialist Party government to tighten procedures to protect suspects.
Police are not required to have a doctor or a lawyer present during interrogations. The SP government did not act.
Now Pasqua has announced that next month police powers will be extended. There is little doubt immigrants will bear the brunt. While less than 10% of the population, over a third of the prison population >n