Paris (France) (AFP)

The leaders of the left and the Greens put a knee on the ground for 8 minutes 46 of silence Tuesday evening during a demonstration in memory of George Floyd and against racism in the police, place de la République in Paris.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Olivier Faure (PS), Yannick Jadot (EELV), Fabien Roussel (PCF) were among the hundreds of people gathered Tuesday at the call of SOS Racism, echoing a ceremony in memory of George Floyd in Houston in the United States.

The "solemn gathering" of Paris was supported by several unions (CGT, FSU, Unsa), political parties (EELV, PS, LFI, PCF), student and high school organizations (Fage, Unef, UNL), associations and NGOs (Ligue des human rights, MRAP, Cran).

This demonstration follows the emotion aroused by the death of George Floyd in the United States during an arrest by the police, which rekindled the controversy in France on the death of Adama Traoré in 2016 after an arrest by the gendarmes .

These rallies, although prohibited by law due to the health crisis, will be tolerated, said Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Tuesday.

To ease the controversy, Christophe Castaner announced on Monday measures to improve the ethics of the police, including a "zero tolerance" of racism.

"There is a movement that is emerging in awareness in the country against the horrible contamination of racism, where we would not want to see it, in an important body, the police," said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came to demonstrate with several leaders of his movement.

"We have to end the denial," he added. He welcomed the fact that Christophe Castaner, who announced the end of the strangulation immobilization procedure, recognizes that "gestures can kill". "The national police must be taken back in hand," added Mr. Mélenchon.

"I invite the police to denounce their colleagues when they are racist and violent," he added.

Numerous rallies to salute the memory of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died of asphyxiation on May 25 under the knees of a white policeman in Minneapolis in the United States, are organized on Tuesday in the world and in several French cities. They gathered some 23,000 people in France on Saturday, according to the Interior Minister.

During a trip to the Paris region where he met the police, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe also tried to calm the controversy by calling for "respect and trust" vis-à-vis the police, but also to "the requirement", in a context of "very great" emotion.

© 2020 AFP