Police authorities in France announced they will report anti-Semitic remarks heard during a demonstration against racism and police violence on Saturday in Paris during which ‘’Dirty Jews’’ was shouted by protesters.
The announcement came after the posting of a video posted by weekly Valeurs Actuelles showing “dirty Jews”shouted by the crowd gathered on the Place de la République in central Paris, where more than 15,000 people were gathered. Riot police fired tear gas to disperse the prote st.
The video of just over a minute, widely shared on social networks, shows protesters haranguing right-wing activists of Generation Identity, who came to display a banner denouncing “anti-white racism” on the roof of ” a building next to the Place de la République. It is then that anti-Semitic insults were heard several times.
” Dirty Jews” is what we can hear in the false anti-racist demonstrations true hate rallies of the far left,’’ wrote on Twitter Eric Ciotti, a member of the French parliament for Les Républicains rightist party.
The outrage generated by George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last month has resonated in France, in particular in deprived city suburbs where rights groups say that accusations of brutal treatment by French police of residents of often immigrant background remain largely unaddressed.
Assa Traore, sister of 24-year-old Adama Traore, who died near Paris in 2016 after police detained him, addressed Saturday’s protest.
“The death of George Floyd has a strong echo in the death in France of my little brother,” she said. “What’s happening in the United States is happening in France. Our brothers are dying.”
Traore’s family say he was asphyxiated when three officers held him down with the weight of their bodies. Authorities say the cause of his death is unclear.