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welcome everyone, france has been plagued by nationwide protest against systemic racism and police violence. this comes after another unarmed young man of color was killed by of police during routine traffic stop. now paris alone saw over a week of riots against the police killing and controversial law which police have seized upon to justify, protesters are... calling state violence and summary executions, the controversial law and its consequences for minorities in france is the topic of this episode of your spotlight, joining us now for our program, is mahmoud rafat, international relations expert joining us from paris, and mr. abikua, researcher and political analyst, joining us from detroit, michigan. gentlemen, welcome to the program,

to our spotlight here to the both of you. i'm going to start with the abimi ezi, um, we've seen minorities in france sir screaming racism and a systemic uh violence by police uh for you for years, mostly muslim citizens or those of african descent. your initial thoughts on how pervasive you think the problem is and what authorities feel in france to address it? it is pervasive. and uh, according to statistics that have been released over the last several months, dozens of people have been killed uh by the french police over the last several years. last year there were over 20 people who were killed, there were others who were wounded as well, and i don't think uh the residents of france uh would be up in arms about this if it was not a serious problem. we saw uh just two months ago uh mass rebellion demonstrations uh in several cities not just paris, but all

across uh france, in response to the brutal police killing of nahil, north african descent, so i think this is serious problem in france, and government does. not address it, it's going to deteriorate even further. thank you sir, mr. mahmoud, welcome to the program, sir, your initial thoughts on how demonstrators, we know, they're taking particular aim at this particular law that came into effect in 2017, the 4351 of the internal security code, um, which extends the possibility for forces of law and order to shoot in the event of a simple suspect's refusal to comply. your initial thoughts on this law that protesters are going after and the fact that it's it's a targeting mostly black french citizen and those of arab descent. yeah, well in order to understand the french police functioning, we need to go back to the the history, to the french revolution. the french revolution, which is

shaping the face of actual france, was launched severally and with police and security mentality, and from her and according to. that even sets of france were constructed in order to liquidify or to make easier for police to be liquid in the cities and to surround manifestations when you see majority of cities and let's take example paris you will find paris is main circle main round about with the center plus the chat and from her the avenues to go through and each is to end by another roundabout and each round about to go through and so on. this construction of the cities reflect lots of or the biggest part of the french mentality, mean the governance of france since more than

200 years since the french revolution. it's to to make the police dominant any time, that is using the force depending on this. in order to oppress manifestations, that made big accumulation and we reach it today, well in 16, 15, french piece had also big waves of movement and actions that were subject of of media, and and today we are talking about throwing algerians in the the sun river until today, something had more than 60. ago almost and but today it has been legalized, these actions have been legalized by the code itself, the law and with years, laws especially under administration of president macron, the police was given lots of laws to

protect its violence and brutality and prs of rules and pr of european union rules and by the way, the european union has code of ethics for the practice of the police and has rules to be applied on all european capitals, most only france who is somehow outside of this rule, these rules because of guarantees and protections were given by laws to the french police, again the french police to understand that need to understand the whole construction of france and the french revolution. shaped the actual face of france we have physically on and thank you rafat, that's a very interesting perspective and that takes us way back to france's colonial as mr. ezekue, this igpn, the inspector responsible for investigating policeman's conduct releaseed annual report on use of

force by officers that found last year 30 people died as a result of police action, 22 were shot dead, from those 22, 13 involved cases of someone refusing to comply. with a simple police order, most of them black and arab descent. now there were three such killings the previous year in 2021 and two in 2020. your thoughts on which trajectory is headed? illustrates clearly that the situation is getting worse for people of color, poor and working class people in france, and regard to the french revolution, lot of the uh reforms that came out of the revolution were eventually, returned uh, for example, the abolition of slavery uh was revoked uh in regard to uh the occupation of haiti and france fought a long war to maintain haiti as a colon. they were defeated in 1804. same situation uh with their colonies in africa, algeria, they occupied

for over 130 years. on may of 1945, they slaughtered thousands of algerians for protesting in celebration of the french victory in world war ii, but also... calling for algerian independence, in the revolution between 1954 and 1962, over million people were killed uh by the french colonial forces, so they have a history of... repression and now with the economic crisis that exist uh in france uh the police are being utilized as the front line of defense against a crummling uh state in france headed by emmanuel macron and uh the prime minister there as well thank you and rafat we know that france has a whole lot to say about countries when they have volatile uh protests when simply riots there were riots in iran the french president called them protests and now they're having rights in france because of this law, but you see very the french uh they're not so

vigilant when it's taking place on their own soil, how they label it and how they address it systemically? well, this is the the the norm of the international relations, you know, for example when united states oppressed severly um movement of less street if you remember that like one decade ago. it was real violence of international and guarantees of speech and and and and despite that the american media at that time, i'm just the example of american here, not only with the french to show, it's worldwide exchange when it comes to this point, at that time american media did not criticize the american police so much, and the politicians did not criticize the police, the american police so much despite this ver behaviors of the american police, the same in france, why

when there is crash, with with a c with another nation like iran, no, anything will happen in iran will be an image of the end of the world, while let me give a direct example, american politicians, french politicians, i mean dental polititions have been talking lot about chinese behaviors against muslims. and chinese persecution of muslims etc. this despite just beside china in india there is more horrible and more terrific behaviors and adopted officially by the government of prime minister modi, but india is a good friend and good ally of the west, that's why india almost never mentioned any critic size of that, so this is the norm in the international relations. when something, if you are my friend, i will close my eyes and i will not say anything about

what happening on your land, if you are not my friend, i will try and i will do my best to use the smallest and most minor things happen in your on your land to give impression that you are a monaster, you are giving up the human values, you are breaking the international law, you are outside of united nations regulations and rules etc. so this is the international relation game which all experts or or all specialists of international relations are familiar with today, we no longer focus on that lot, it's just political announcement which at the end the day do not help lot neither build a real situation or get real benefit more than to be media propaganda. and mr. thank you, mr. rifat, mr. into mr. rudd's point if you put a law on the books that is getting this kind of

result is blasted by rights group and is targeting a specific sector of your society unjustly and disproportionally why do you allow it to persist? because obviously they have agenda to suppress uh the african and muslim and working class communities in france uh that is their agenda and it's the same thing. in the united states in britain, all these three uh leading, western industrialized countries have a similar problem with police misconduct and police brutality. it was quite interesting uh when the rebellions were taking place in france, just several months ago in response to the police killing of nachill, macron framed the demonstrations as being a result of juvenile delinquency. he accused the parents of those uh involved. in those uh rebellions as being irresponsible rather than address the

underlying social problems that prompt uh these type of unrest to break out in france. i think it's an avoidance on the part of the french government, they not want to accept that their society is institutionally racist and that the police are brutal and they need to be disarmed and they need to be dismantled and reorganized and the same situation is true in the uk as well as the united states. thank you sir, and i want to put that uh mr. ezekiwe's um words to you, mr. rufot, if paris, washington and london, they proclaim to be the champions of human rights throughout the world, they try to preach... the rest of us what it means to be equal, uh, just, um, democratic, they try to teach us all about human rights, but when the impatus has to fall upon their own people, upon themselves, upon their own backyard, why do they have such a hard time keeping it clean? well, let me just um highlight very important

point, yeah, there is um, lots of... remarks concerning the french police functioning, that's true, but what is making these remarks to appear so much is is the nature of the french society, the history also which is building the nature of the french personality, the french personality is naturally rebel personality, is not opident at all personality in front of the governance, in front of the governor, it's not... oppedant society, i do not want to specify another or compare to another societies, but let's say to generally to the north of europe, more north of europe and scandinavian countries, these countries for example, when you go there once the governor, the prime minister or the cabinet or the parliament or whatever, took a decision and there is new rule, new law to increase the

age of retirement for example, society will be obedident, there is kind of trust between the society and their governor, while the french specificity in europe, which is very close to italian, but more in france we can notice that, french society, not, not that submissive in front of its governor, and that highlights a lot and put lots of light on the reactions of the police, how the police behave in france, so that's why the french police is always mentioned in the news because also of reactions coming from the french society itself, me myself from arabic origin um, i can confirm yeah there is somehow some remarks also concerning the and misconduct concerning the discrimination, yeah, but not as much as it's described, the

french police is severe and brutal against all society, all competents, in the society, black, maybe especially in some areas in some maybe a little bit more against arabs or cities like when we got to paris, some areas were highly populated by arabs and americans, but this is really minor comparing to the french brutality with with against the french manifestations of the yellow vests for example. they are not arabs, they are not black, they are real french people, coming from french descendants since hundreds of centuries, and despite that we saw them being massacred by the police, and we did not have exact numbers of victims by the way about victims of yellow vests, for example, we did not have real exact numbers, all numbers are

showing are highly doted by manifestant themselves who witnessed that some of their colleagues even were killed, so the french brutality is against all ingredients of the society, unfortunately, and that's a really interesting point, i want to put you sir, because it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg, the for the french personality uh mr. riford said, is rebellious against authority in general, and their protests are friendly as a result, but that that come as a result of state violence inflicted upon them by authority to them to make. them rebellious or did the state become authoritative due to their rebellion nature? because in the us you have something completely different, you have protesters out that are victims, literally victims of police violence, and you cannot really say that they cause the police to create that violence against them? normally uh people will not go

out and demonstrate and rebell if there's no just cause uh for their actions. and the point is well taken, the yellow vest movement was met with severe repression, at the beginning of this year, unions and the student unions, had rolling strikes, that raised the age of to receive uh for retirement, that those demonstrations as well were met uh by vicious police brutality and they went ahead anyway uh the french government and so this does not look good for the french ruling class and i that they're becoming more and more exposed. what is going on now in west africa? um, they were just ordered to leave niger, they claim now they're going to pull out, so all across the world people are beginning to see france uh

a different light, not as uh the origins or the originators of the french revolution of liberty and fraternity and so forth, but as a ruling class that is seeking to maintain his hegemony uh whether it's in uh france, in africa or wherever else? they feel they have national interests. thank you and final thoughts i'm going to put to you, mr. reffat, you close the program with um, if you want to basically track down mr. izilways's narrative there and yours, doesn't seem like french authorities have too much care to address this problem? well, there have been lots of attempts uh in order to modify the functioning of the... two decades, but these attempts are um were not successful, simply as simple as because the government, the state did not support them, france is very,

very, very concentrated regime, and doesn't support a project, this project will never see the light one day seriously, it will exist on the media, but it will never be applied on the... around and at the end of the day every single thing in france is in hands of the governor of the authorities, the civil the civil society, the ngos etc. they exist lot, but they are just to express their wishes, but to be applied, it must be adopted somehow officially on official level, that's why it never been adopted, meanwile the contrary has been adopted is to give more protection to the police for this for this reason the the the attempts of making serious

reform and the functioning of the french police have been not successful and i do not expect that to be successful um for more two three decades minimum from now thank you both for joining us in the program pleasure checking with both of you mr. mahmoud there joining us. from paris and mr. abqa joining us from detroit michigan and viewers that brings us to the end of the segment of your press tv spotlight program, thank you for tuning in and goodbye for now.

earthhon runner savoring that last lap here as we approach the finish pieces of asteroid ben, you see the reaction there just moments ago as they got sample back, they're just a little bit off the edge of our src.

as the berlin wall collapsed in 1989, so did the once great superpower of the soviet union, the communist party leader michael gorbachov ustured in new era of openness with the west. by 1991, peter strukker was failing, as along came the new russian state's first president, boreth jeltson. this documentary tells the story of the eight year

yelson's leadership. under russia's attempted transition from communism to capitalism, it is an often tragic story of the fall of once proud superpower, the hardships of millions of ordinary people, and the rise of new breed of ultra rich oligarchs. is also the story of how russia has become the state it is today.

ukraine announces the arrival of the first batch of us made abrams battle tanks in kiev as part of a multi-billion dollar security assistance package promised by washington. thousands of ethnic armenians in nagarno karabakh are crossing over into armenia following azerbaijan's offensive last week that caused the surrender of separating. is there and hundreds of settlers backed by the israeli military once again storm the alaxa mosk drawing condemnation from muslim countries.