Image source, Getty Images
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- Author, Redacción*
- Author's title, BBC News World
Several French cities have imposed nocturnal touches on children and adolescents after a wave of violence related to drug trafficking, which last year left 110 dead throughout the country.
After Béziers or Limoges, the last one to adopt this controversial measure has been Nimes, in the south of the country.
The authorities claim that the decision is to prevent those under 16 from being “exposed to violence” and that it also seeks to “contain the tensions” that certain neighborhoods of the city have recently whipped. They have also announced that they will reinforce the police presence.
The measure, which entered into force on July 21, will be imposed for 15 days, extendable, in six impoverished and gangrened neighborhoods by drug trafficking in the city.
Throughout the last month, several shootings, one of them in broad daylight, left one dead and several injured in this city in the Occitania region.
Last week the partially calcined body of a 19 -year -old on the outskirts of Nimes was found.
When announcing the curfew, in force between 21:00 and 06:00, Mayor Jean-Paul Fournier said that the situation had become “unsustainable” and that drug traffickers had created a “climate of fear and terror.”
Mayor Lieutenant Richard Schieven said that the curfew touch would protect minors who are not involved in drug trafficking, “but also 12 or 13 -year -old children who are exploited by drug traffickers.”
Béziers, 120 km to the southwest, has since last year for children under 13 between 23:00 and 06:00, and last March extended it to those under 15 in three neighborhoods. The measure is applied from April to September and during school holidays.
Image source, Getty Images
“No 10 -year -old boy who is on the street at two in the morning is doing something else to cause problems,” said Mayor Robert Ménard, close to the extreme right, in 2024.
Despite the measures, Béziers remains full of violence. The weekend, hooded young people attracted the police and then attacked them with fireworks, local media reported.
A similar incident occurred in Limoges, in southwest France. The city has also imposed curfew measures for children under 13 during the summer holidays, but after the disturbances in which 100 people participated last weekend, Mayor Émile Roger Lombertie said that the results of these measures “were not good.”
“There were riots starring young people, no one managed to intercept and stop them, and the curfew was useless,” Lombertie told the BFMTV channel, who added that more police officers were needed to enforce the measures.
Two years ago, there was great outrage at Nimes when a 10 -year -old boy, Fayed died from a bullet lost in the Pissevin neighborhood.
Other municipalities of different political sign have chosen to impose similar measures this summer. This is the case, for example, of Saint-Ouen and Trier-Sur-Seine, both on the periphery of Paris, who have imposed remaining touches for children under 16.
Some, such as Cagnes-Sur -mer, have been applied for 20 years for children under 13 between April and October, although only 3 children have been arrested in all this time, according to the data of the France 3 channel.
Image source, VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images
Doubtful efficacy
These measures have been criticized by human rights organizations such as the League of the Rights of Man, which described it as “totally inappropriate”, “penalizing and worrying”, which also contravenes the “fundamental freedoms of circulation of minors”, especially during the holiday period, according to AFP.
The effectiveness of this type of regulations has been questioned by experts such as the sociologist Sebastian Roché, author of The unfinished nation. Youth facing school and police (“The unfinished nation. Youth in front of school and police”), who considers that these are symbolic cuts.
“There are no changes in youth crime between cities that adopt touches and those that do not,” Rocché told the newspaper “20 minute”.
On the one hand, there are parents who have lost control of their teenage children and are unable to enforce that curfew, says the sociologist and, on the other, the police sometimes do not have the additional resources necessary to do so to do so.
The latest violent events confirm, however, a growing trend that has seen how drug -related violence has spread beyond Marseille, the traditional epicenter of wars between bands in France.
According to the Ministry of Interior, 110 people died in France and more than 300 were injured in acts of drug -related violence in 2024.
Image source, Nicolas Tucat/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, have been insisting on the need to combat drug trafficking scourge.
Earlier this year, they promoted a bill in the Parliament that resulted in the creation of two maximum security prisons for drug barons, a new specialized section of the Prosecutor's Office, additional powers for investigators and a special status for protection for informants.
Darmanin declared Tuesday that “the first 17 drug traffickers, including the most dangerous in our country,” were transferred to a high security prison in Vendin-Le-Vieil, in northern France.
The wave of fires and firearms attacks that occurred in French prisons during spring was greatly attributed to drug traffickers' bands, which thus responded to the Government's repression campaign.
*With information from Laura Gozzi, from BBC News.
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