On the 4th of March, a 13-year-old boy in Lyon suffered an accident with a scooter, he crashed badly and was put directly into an artificial coma in hospital.
The masses in the neighbourhood describe the situation as that the boy was chased by the police with the stolen scooter and crashed. The police deny this. But already when the cops came to the scene of the accident, they felt the anger of the masses. The mainly young people threw stones and bottles at them, and the police responded with tear gas. Since then, things have not been quiet in Lyon. That same day, cars and rubbish bins were set on fire. And the anger spread further into the surrounding municipalities. Despite the curfew from 6 p.m., police cars, among others, were set on fire and 21 people were arrested in the following nights. And the struggles go on: Only two days ago, on the 16th of March, a police patrol was ambushed and pelted with projectiles.
The various bourgeois politicians quickly pounced on the struggles of the masses, calling for a tougher government and police crackdown on the masses. Marie Le Pen called for fear to "change camp". The deputy mayor of Bron, a commune around Lyon, spoke in a tweet of "carnage in this area. Scenes of guerrilla warfare in the middle of the day." and "By letting things go on, by not punishing the first offence severely, there is no limit to the violence." This war rhetoric is also echoed in the statements of the police union, which described the fighting as "mini civil wars". France's interior minister then sent 200 extra police to "restore republican order".
Videos of the struggles can be found here and here.
