A rally of the Kurdish community took place on Friday, and another is planned for this Saturday in tribute to the victims of the attack.
Three people were shot dead and three others injured Friday in the center of Paris by a man of French nationality who, according to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, wanted “obviously to attack foreigners”. The facts took place on rue d’Enghien, near a Kurdish cultural center, in a lively shopping district popular with the Kurdish community.
“Three people died: two in front of the Kurdish cultural center, another in a restaurant and another fighting death,” the interior minister said in the afternoon.
In the evening, a spontaneous gathering of the Kurdish community formed in this area, and clashes took place with the police.
“We are really angry”
The people gathered repeatedly expressed their anger after the tragedy, linking this attack to the murders of three Kurdish activists in January 2013. “We are really angry because it was people we knew who were murdered, ten years ago the same thing”, explains to BFMTV a demonstrator, “we are really very angry”.
“We are here to show our anger, ten years ago three Kurdish comrades, three women, three symbols of the Kurdish community were murdered,” recalls another. “It is unacceptable that people are murdered like this in the middle of Paris.”
“Once again unfortunately the Kurdish community has been bruised in France, in Paris”, also declared Agit Polat, spokesperson for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France (CDKF).
“We have not been heard”
During a press conference on Friday, he explained that he was “angry (…) because we have repeatedly alerted [sur un danger contre les Kurdes] and the last time was just 20 days ago, we are angry because we have not been heard”.
Guest of BFMTV this Saturday morning, Berivan Firat, spokesperson for external relations of the CDKF, assured that “the Kurdish community was directly targeted” in this attack, and called for the qualification of this act as a “terrorist attack”.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the motive of racism is one of the avenues explored but must be confirmed in particular by the statements of the suspect during his police custody. The track of a terrorist attack has been ruled out at this stage of the investigations, according to the prosecutor.
In a press release, the president of SOS Racisme Dominique Soppo he denounced “an atmosphere of increasingly uninhibited and violent racism, street acts by far-right groups that are more and more frequent and with an exciting effect” in France. He says he has already warned about “the inevitability of terrorist acts by people moved by the extreme right. It is to be feared that we have reached this point.”
A rally is to take place this Saturday afternoon in tribute to the victims. The Paris police chief must receive representatives of the Kurdish community in the morning.
