George Floyd's funeral: in Paris and in the provinces, the protesters pay homage on their knees

Paris, Texas. Two places separated by thousands of kilometers but united Tuesday evening to pay tribute to George Floyd, who became in two weeks a world symbol against racism and police violence.

While his funeral was celebrated in Houston, about 2,400 people gathered in Republic Square, according to the police headquarters. The call had been launched by SOS Racisme and several unions and political parties joined it, including La France insoumise, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts and the Socialist Party.

In the capital, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot and Olivier Faure, the leaders of the three teams, thus participated in this gathering. "It is not only the problem of the police, it is the problem of France", summed up Jean-Luc Mélenchon before joining the crowd, much less massive than that observed last week before the Paris court during the demonstration at the call of the family of Adama Traoré, who died in 2016 during his arrest by gendarmes.

Protesters kneeling down and masked

What the two demonstrations have in common is the presence of singer Camélia Jordana, who sang “We Shall Overcome”, an anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s in the United States.

A highlight of this gathering in the capital but also of the other tributes organized at the same time in Bordeaux, Lyon, Lille, Dijon, Poitiers, Caen or Orléans, the long silence of almost nine minutes observed by the demonstrators. Eight minutes and 46 seconds exactly, in reference to the time during which the police officer Derek Chauvin maintained his knee on George Floyd's neck before he lost his life. The vast majority of participants are just silent with one knee on the ground.

🇫🇷 [FLASH] - Hundreds of people are gathered on Place de la République in #Paris. 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence were respected in tribute to #GeorgeFloyd. Jean-Luc #Melenchon is there. All the participants put one knee on the ground. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/wv43gWC7jy

While the end of the demonstration on June 2 was punctuated by a few clashes with the police, the rallies which were held in Paris and in the provinces on Tuesday did not give rise to any notable incident, despite their theoretical ban due to the state of health emergency.

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The demonstrations "are not (authorized) in fact [...] but the global emotion, which is healthy on this subject, goes beyond the legal rules that apply", had explained earlier today the Minister of Interior Christophe Castaner on BFMTV, inviting demonstrators to "pay attention" and "to practice barrier gestures". In fact, most of the demonstrators, in Paris and elsewhere in France, wore a mask to protect themselves but had more difficulty in respecting physical distancing measures.