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Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said there had been a sudden violent turn in the protest on Saturday but it was not yet clear why.
Speaking on news channel BFM TV, Nunez said a few dozen protesters were responsible for the violence, adding there had been 11 arrests and around 30 minor injuries.
Demonstrators stand next to a burning barricade during a protest against the recent shooting at the Kurdish culture center in Paris on Saturday.Credit:AP
Most demonstrators were ethnic Kurds of varying generations who came together to mourn the three fellow Kurds who were killed, who included a prominent feminist activist and a Kurdish singer who came to France as a refugee.
“We are devastated, really. We are destroyed because we lost a very important member of our community and we are angry. How is this possible?” said demonstrator Yekbun Ogur, a middle school biology teacher in Paris. “Is it normal for a man with a gun to sneak into a cultural place to come and murder people?”
Demonstrator Yunus Cicek wiped his tears away as spoke of the victims, and his fears. “We are not protected here. Even though I have political refugee status, I don’t feel safe. ... Maybe next time it will be me.”
The shooting shook the Kurdish community and put French police on extra alert for the Christmas weekend. The Paris police chief met on Saturday with members of the Kurdish community to try to allay their fears.
The Interior Ministry reported a 13 per cent rise in race-related crimes or other violations in 2021 over 2019, after an 11 per cent rise from 2018 to 2019. The ministry did not include 2020 in its statistics because of successive pandemic lockdowns that year. It said a disproportionate number of such crimes target people of African descent, and also cited hundreds of attacks based on religion.
Friday’s attack took place at the cultural centre and a nearby Kurdish restaurant and Kurdish hair salon. Surveillance video from the hair salon shared online suggests people in the salon subdued the attacker before police reached the scene. The prosecutor’s office would not elaborate on the circumstances of his arrest.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the suspect was clearly targeting foreigners, and had acted alone and was not officially affiliated with any extreme-right or other radical movements. The suspect had past convictions for illegal arms possession and armed violence.
Kurdish activists said they had recently been warned by police of threats to Kurdish targets.
In 2013, three women Kurdish activists, including Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were found shot dead at a Kurdish centre in Paris.
Turkey’s army has long been battling against Kurdish militants affiliated with the banned PKK in south-east Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. Turkey’s military also recently launched a series of air and artillery strikes against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.
“We are not being protected at all. In 10 years, six Kurdish activists have been killed in the heart of Paris in broad daylight,” Berivan Firat, a spokesperson for the CDK-F, told BFM TV at the demonstration.
She said the event had soured after some protesters were provoked by people making pro-Turkish gestures in a passing vehicle.
Kurdish representatives, who met on Saturday with Nunez as well as Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti, reiterated their call for Friday’s shooting to be considered a terror attack.
AP, Reuters