Anthony McIntyre 📺 December 1986, and a young French man is walking home from a concert.
The 22 year old's route brings him close to where a riot has broken out. If light is generated by the evening's events it is from the glow of petrol bombs being hurled by rioters, making visible in the manner of a night scope the dark menacing figures of Parisian plods.
Prior to the disturbance a protest had taken place against reforms of the university system on top of proposed legislation placing restrictions on immigration. Malik Oussekine is involved in neither. His reason for being in the vicinity was the music of Nina Simone.
A motor cycle gang of French cops is on the rampage seeking out heads to crack. Like other violent biker gangs on the scent of blood, a feeding frenzy takes grip when its path crosses with that of the young man. Malik Oussekine is beaten to death sheltering in a doorway by the uniformed thugs who attack him for no reason other than he did not look French. A witness to the violent assault described it:
I was returning home. As I closed the door after dialling the code, I saw the distraught face of a young man. I let him pass and I wanted to close the door . . . Two policemen rushed into the hall, rushed on the guy and beat him with incredible violence. He fell, they continued beating with truncheons and kicking him in the stomach and back.
The witness was also beaten when he tried to intervene.
The victim was French but his family hailed from Algeria, a country familiar with French state violence. 25 years earlier Parisian police had murdered 250 Algerian demonstrators on the streets of the French capital.
This dramatization shows the arduous battle the family of Malik undertook in their struggle for truth and justice. Sarah, Malik's sister, is conflicted not about the truth of what happened to her brother but about telling her mother the truth - that her youngest son was dead. Sarah deflected as a delaying tactic before the inevitable moment of reckoning.
In an age when there is much talk about the problems of multiculturalism, a supposed reluctance to racially and socially integrate undermining social cohesion and giving rise to ghettoization, Oussekine depicts a scenario where racist state forces were determined to keep people as outsiders, forcing them into the safety of numbers in communities which felt compelled to operate as billiard balls perpetually designed to clash with other billiard balls on the societal table rather than as cobwebs, the strands of which blend and mix. The targets of police violence were then accused of being reluctant to integrate. Victim blaming.
The recent racism on stilts prancing around the former Crown Paints site in Coolock would welcome the type of policing offered by Jean Schmitt and Christophe Garcia, the thugs responsible for the killing of Malik, but who received only a suspended sentence for their crimes.
The victim was French but his family hailed from Algeria, a country familiar with French state violence. 25 years earlier Parisian police had murdered 250 Algerian demonstrators on the streets of the French capital.
Malik strived to integrate as a French citizen in the society to which he belonged, a sentiment that was not reciprocated. He aspired to become a Jesuit priest and when he was murdered he was in possession of a a pocket bible. Other 'dangerous' items he had a history of being familiar with were a basket ball and a guitar.
His death and the huge public outcry in the face of police cover up and government disinformation sets the scene for this four part miniseries, detailing his journey from obscurity in life to national prominence in death.
His death and the huge public outcry in the face of police cover up and government disinformation sets the scene for this four part miniseries, detailing his journey from obscurity in life to national prominence in death.
This dramatization shows the arduous battle the family of Malik undertook in their struggle for truth and justice. Sarah, Malik's sister, is conflicted not about the truth of what happened to her brother but about telling her mother the truth - that her youngest son was dead. Sarah deflected as a delaying tactic before the inevitable moment of reckoning.
Those familiar with the North's violent political conflict will immediately grasp the wider truth dilemma, having witnessed various one-eyed tribes' refusal to see what their own tribe has inflicted on another tribe. In the North's supposed reconciliation the one staple ingredient of reciprocity is recrimination, all sides happily lying to and about one another.
In an age when there is much talk about the problems of multiculturalism, a supposed reluctance to racially and socially integrate undermining social cohesion and giving rise to ghettoization, Oussekine depicts a scenario where racist state forces were determined to keep people as outsiders, forcing them into the safety of numbers in communities which felt compelled to operate as billiard balls perpetually designed to clash with other billiard balls on the societal table rather than as cobwebs, the strands of which blend and mix. The targets of police violence were then accused of being reluctant to integrate. Victim blaming.
The recent French elections, which saw first the advance of the far right and then its forced retreat, were a useful backdrop to Oussekine, inviting the question of how much France has really changed. While a wonderful concept, Laïcité should never have become a cop cudgel used to batter Muslim women wearing the burkini at beaches. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, aye right.
The recent racism on stilts prancing around the former Crown Paints site in Coolock would welcome the type of policing offered by Jean Schmitt and Christophe Garcia, the thugs responsible for the killing of Malik, but who received only a suspended sentence for their crimes.
I got up from the settee having finished viewing the series with many thoughts in mind, the overriding one being from the pen of David Mamet:
When Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
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