A new UN report accuses French police of excessive use of force and disproportionate targeting of minority groups, leading to several deaths resulting from the use of firearms during traffic stops and serious injuries in the policing of protests.
The UN Human Rights Committee said in its recommendations that it "remains concerned by the number of reported cases of excessive use of force", especially "during traffic controls, arrests, forced evacuations and demonstrations", AFP reported on Thursday.
The committee explained the dire consequences of this violence, highlighting "the number of deaths resulting from the use of firearms by law enforcement officers during traffic checks".
The use of firearms and intermediate weapons, it added, "has had serious consequences for protesters mainly and others, with many people becoming blind, people losing their arms and people being seriously injured".The committee also highlighted that the use of such weapons "disproportionately affect members of certain minority groups, in particular people of African and Arab descent, indigenous peoples and migrants".
Over the past three to four years, the committee has criticised the police for employing "no form of de-escalation to control the protests" and instead taking "a confrontational stance towards the protests".
The human rights body also expressed concern about "the apparent lack of appropriate sanctions and cases of apparent impunity".
It pointed to the case of Adama Traore, a young man of African descent who died in 2016 after gendarmes used prone restraint during his arrest, and criticised that "no one" was "held responsible for his death".