This Sunday, members of French Asian communities marched in large numbers in Paris, like last year to protest against violence against the Asian community. Their exact number is unknown: police are talking about 3,000 Chinese nationals, and the organizers claimed of 20,000.
The event, held at the call from Asian associations in France, took place peacefully, despite the obvious anger of the participants. The demonstrators carried a banner “Freedom, equality, fraternity and security, to head up the nation.
Among the demonstrators, there were many young people, wrapped in French flags and shouting slogans like “Safety for Everyone” or “live together, live in security.” According to Oliver Wang, spokesman for the group of Asian associations in France and their French friends, “Security is the condition in which people are exposed to danger, we demand security because it is a right, it is the essential condition of freedoms.”
“Every week, in neighborhoods such as Belleville, Crimea, or Tolbiac Massena, Asians are victims of violence,” said a representative associations. “They are threatened, they are striking for a few euros, a mobile phone or on fly snatching a jewel. This is outrageous.”
According to Jean-Pierre Buisson who married to a Chinese, they are taken to task because “there are many who have no papers ( legal documents ), and a certain class of the French population assaulted them knowing they will not be complaint with the police.”
The case of Jiamming, 30, is particularly emblematic: a picture of him on his hospital bed, under artificial respiration, still in a coma for three weeks after an assault, was exhibited by his brother throughout the event. In the evening of May 29, Jiamming was beaten for trying to photograph the men who had stolen the bag of a client in the restaurant where he worked.
For the protesters, politicians in Paris has little relevance to security. Moreover, only one elected Bouakkaz Hamou, elected 20th District, attended the event.