Hundreds of protesters defied a ban on marching against police violence in central Paris on Saturday, a week after riots sparked by the killing of a teenager by a police officer in a Paris suburb.

“Citizens’ marches” marked by “grief and anger” against police violence are taking place across France, including Paris, on Saturday.

As reported by AFP, in Paris, more than 1,000 people gathered in the afternoon in memory of Adama Traore, a young man who died shortly after his arrest by gendarmes in July 2016.

Assa Traore, Adama’s sister, who has become a figure in the fight against police violence since his death, spoke on a bench in Place de République in front of several elected officials of the opposition France Invincible (radical left) party, surrounded by a large force of law and order.

Police dispersed the crowd from the vast Place de la République in Paris, sending several hundred people onto the Boulevard Purpurue where they were seen as a peaceful march.

“We are marching for young people to condemn police violence… We allow neo-Nazis to march, but we are not allowed to march,” she said, referring to a parade of hundreds of far-right activists in Paris that caused controversy because it was authorized by the authorities .

The ban on demonstrations is “shocking”

The Paris police department said in a decision published on its website that it had banned the planned demonstration, citing a “context of tension”.

“We still have freedom of speech in France, but freedom of assembly in particular is under threat,” said Félix Bouvarel, a medical worker who came to the rally despite the ban, which he called “shocking”.

Authorities banned a demonstration in the northern city of Lille on Saturday, while a march in Marseille was moved outside the city centre.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said this week that more than 3,000 people, mostly teenagers, had been arrested during six nights of unrest that ended a week ago. About 2,500 buildings were damaged.

The beginning of the unrest was the fact that on June 27, a policeman shot 17-year-old Nakhel M during a traffic stop. The policeman is being investigated for premeditated murder; and his lawyer says that he did not intend to kill the teenager.

Saturday’s demonstration was called by the family of Adam Traore, a black Frenchman whose death in police custody in 2016 has since been marked by annual protests. Organizers tried to move the protest to central Paris after it was banned in Beaumont-sur-Oise, the Paris suburb where Traore died.

France rejects any “accusations of systemic racism” as unfounded

French authorities and politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron, deny institutionalized racism in the country’s law enforcement agencies.

France’s foreign ministry on Saturday denied the country’s legal system was racist, a day after the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on France to address “structural and systemic causes of racial discrimination, including in law enforcement”. .

“Any accusations of systemic racism or discrimination on the part of law enforcement agencies in France are unfounded,” the Foreign Ministry said.