A 13-year-old boy died in the Paris region last Sunday during a fight between rival gangs. These fights are more and more frequent. Let's not wait for more dramas to fight against violence.
He was barely 13 years old, the age of the promises of life. But he died last Sunday after being beaten in a fight between rival gangs. It was not in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. No, it was in France, in the Paris region.
The sad "game" of violence has emerged from the screens to invade abandoned neighborhoods. It ends in tragedy!
These fights are increasingly deadly and frequent: one every three days in the Paris region for two years. They are more and more violent: iron bars, white weapons ... last stage before the firearms.
They are more and more sudden. They organize themselves in a few hours using social networks that spread insults, mockery, provocations.
They concern people who are younger and younger. Hardly into adolescence, they do not always know the difference between reality and the virtual.
In the background, traffickers are using them to create chaos and terrorize adults to carry out their sordid traffic.
Parents and elected officials are poor. Their calls often remain unanswered, as was the case last Sunday's tragedy: " This death was preventable because we had issued alerts to the state, detailing the situation. Couriers, mobilizations, couriers still ... but in vain, " explained an elected official from Seine-Saint-Denis (1).
Gerard Collomb even sounded the alarm when he left the Ministry of the Interior: " We must again provide security in the neighborhoods, but it is essential to change them. When neighborhoods become impoverished, ghettoized, there can only be difficulties ... " A plan to reconquer fifteen neighborhoods is launched.
We can not close our eyes to the gravity of the situation. If the state is to organize better to be more effectively present, a general mobilization against violence is essential.
She starts by supporting families, mothers, of course, but also fathers. They are too often absent and their authority is weakened by unemployment whereas " their educational role " is " nevertheless fundamental " , explained Tomas Sauvadet of the University of Créteil (1).
It is also necessary to intelligently sanction the acts of delinquency or incivility: repairing what has been broken, cleaning what has been soiled, visiting the jostled person ... These civic measures would make it possible to pull the very young out of the spiral of the violence, while developing their sense of responsibility and solidarity.
Our society must also come out of hypocrisy. How to deplore the violence while spreading widely its instructions for use, through a number of video games and series? A basic education of respect for life and non-violence is never necessary.
The death of Aboubakar obliges us. Let's not wait for more dramas to understand that the fight against violence is everyone's business.
(1) Liberation , 16 October 2018