04.08.2019, Nantes.
The Black Bloc and other radical groups clashed with the police in the center of Nantes, a correspondent of the Rossa Primavera News Agency reported on August 3.
The reason for the unrest was the disappearance of 24-year-old Steve Caniço, who went missing during a “Music Festival” on June 22-24. This happened at the Wilson Embankment, which has no parapet, where the police were summoned to stop the noise that lasted until 3 a.m. The police used tear gas to disperse the hooligans. Several people ended up in the Loire River. Steve, probably, was among them. He could not swim. His body was found only on July 29. The incident is being investigated. According to preliminary information, “the police actions and the death of the young man are not connected”.
Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner ordered to investigate the actions of both the police and the entire department at the Music Festival. The Nantes Prefecture attracts too many questions, including suspicion of “covering up” illegal immigration.
However, protesters consider the Interior Ministry’s actions to be insufficient, and for the second time since July 20, they have come out to demand “justice” and denounce “police violence”.
The posters contain radical slogans such as “Murderers!”, “Everybody hates the police” and “The police disfigure, the police kill”. A crowd of radicals chanting: “Pétain, come and get Chassaing” (name of the Nantes police commissioner, who led the dispersal of hooligans).
Despite their small numbers, the participants of the march behave themselves violently and radically. They built a barricade in the city center and set it on fire. Protesters threw various objects at the police. In turn, the police used water cannons and tear gas. Thirty people were arrested.
The last summer in July on the streets of Nantes urban guerilla warfare also took place behind the mask of protests against “police violence”. Then the reason for those protests was the murder of a young man in a troubled district when the police pursued him. In recent years, clashes with police and shootings by drug gangs in Nantes have become commonplace. Tonight, for example, an 18-year-old boy was shot dead on the border between Nantes and St. Herblain at around 1 a.m. by unknown persons from a car passing by.
The insecurity in the city is created by gangs of drug dealers and radicals, who regularly turn the city center into a battlefield. According to them, this is how they fight “against capitalism and police violence”. It is clear that the “Music Festival” itself, which has become a day of alcoholization of young people, and the overall situation will give the “Black Bloc” plenty more reasons for protests.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
