A few hours before the start of the quarter-final of the African Cup of Nations between Algeria and Nigeria, played this Saturday, January 10 in the evening in Marrakech, the Paris police headquarters brought out the heavy artillery. A prefectural decree, published Tuesday January 7, prohibits all gatherings and demonstrations within a large area of central Paris until Sunday morning.
The measures are strict. From Friday January 9 at 6 p.m. until Sunday January 11 at 6 a.m., “any demonstration on the public highway of a protest, festive or sporting nature” is prohibited in a large area which includes in particular the Champs-Élysées, the Place de l’Etoile, the Tuileries garden and goes up to the Porte Dauphine and the Porte Maillot. The decree also targets “gatherings of people” likely to disturb public order.
A second prefectural decree authorizes in the capital “the recording and transmission of images by means of cameras installed on aircraft from January 9 to 11”. The use of drones should make it possible, according to the public authorities, “to have a wide-angle vision while limiting the engagement of forces on the ground, and if necessary, to organize their operational deployment in a responsive and efficient manner, particularly in the event of crowd movements or violent actions.”
“Overflows”
This decision comes just after the excesses that occurred Tuesday evening in Paris and in several major French cities, during Algeria’s epic qualification for the quarter-finals. In the Barbès district, a festive gathering with smoke bombs forced the RATP to close the metro station for an hour, between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
The scenes were similar in Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Roubaix and Toulouse. In the North, fireworks mortars were fired towards police officers in Lille, slightly injuring one of them. In Roubaix, despite a reinforced security system with concrete blocks and traffic restrictions, tensions broke out between the crowd and the police. Several vehicles and trash cans were set on fire. In Toulouse, four vehicles went up in smoke.
Faced with this escalation, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez sent a letter on Friday to all the country’s prefects. If he recognizes that “spontaneous gatherings are regularly observed on public roads, testifying to the collective enthusiasm surrounding this Cup”, he especially recalls that they “could have generated excesses, particularly on the occasion of Algeria’s victory”.
“Firm application” of security measures
The minister asks the prefects to “mobilize all the administrative police powers at their disposal”, in particular “by making it possible to fight against the misused use of pyrotechnic means and fireworks mortars”. He also insists on “firm application” of removal measures against foreigners who have disturbed public order.
If the devices “are in the hands of the prefectures”, recalls the Ministry of the Interior, Laurent Nunez has indicated that he intends for post-match events to be managed “with great firmness, no disturbance should be tolerated”, we indicate at Place Beauvau.
In Paris, law enforcement will be massively deployed in sensitive areas this Saturday evening. Traffic and parking will also be disrupted in the affected area. Violators of the order are subject to criminal sanctions.
Further south, and to avoid incidents, the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture has for its part decided to ban parking from 5 p.m. and motor vehicle traffic from 6 p.m. to midnight on part of the Old Port in Marseille.
To the north, the city of Roubaix is also renewing its decree to prohibit traffic in certain sectors. If Algeria qualifies, similar measures could be renewed for the semi-finals on January 14.
