French nazis kill teenager

This video from France is about a demonstration in Lille on 6 June to commemorate Clément Méric, killed the day before by nazis in Paris.

By Pierre Mabut in France:

Student killed by fascists in central Paris

14 June 2013

An 18-year-old student and anti-fascist, Clément Méric, was beaten to death by a group of fascist thugs in the afternoon of June 5 near the St. Lazare rail station in central Paris. He was declared brain dead the next day at the La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.

Clément Méric arrived late to meet a group of friends at a private sale of casual clothes at a store next to the station. The friends had by chance come across a group of five skinhead thugs, also at the sale, bearing swastika tattoos and T-shirts with Nazi slogans like “white power” and “blood and honour”, which provoked a verbal exchange between the two groups inside the store. Clément and his friends were then attacked with knuckledusters by the thugs outside the store.

The medical examination said the young student died from brutal injuries to the face. A 20-year-old youth employed as a security guard has been charged with deliberate assault resulting in death without premeditation—a lesser charge than manslaughter, which the prosecutor initially sought.

The five suspects are said to be members of the Revolutionary Nationalist Youth (JNR), who serve as marshals for the fascist group Third Way.

Méric was studying at the elite Paris university Sciences Po, where friends said he was “someone whose company everyone enjoyed”. Méric’s former head teacher in Brest, his hometown, said he was a brilliant student and “courteous and respectful of others”.

“He was killed for his ideas”, said a student friend. Méric was in fact a member of the anarchist-influenced AAPB (Paris Suburbs Anti-Fascist Action) group, which has been active in support of the gay marriage law so detested by the parliamentary right-wing UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) and its fascist acolytes. Clément had recovered from leukaemia two years ago.

The Socialist Party (PS) government has launched a procedure to ban the fascist Third Way and JNR held responsible for the killing. The JNR was founded in 1987 and was revived in 2010 by skinhead Serge Ayoub, nicknamed “Batskin” in the 1980s for his regular use of baseball bats on leftist opponents.

According to the daily Le Figaro, the JNR “consists of about 30 members, all skinheads and very muscular, dressed in black, some of them with impressive tattoos”. Their slogan, copied from Mussolini’s fascists in Italy, is “Believe, Obey, Combat”. They march “every year (on the second weekend of May) in a very martial style, in line and in step, through Rivoli Street in Paris along with other groups of the extreme radical right”, the paper notes.

Rallies to protest against the killing of Clément Méric and honour his memory were held in several major cities throughout France on June 6. …

A section of the conservative UMP has mobilised the fears and insecurity of backward rural elements behind an anti-gay marriage movement, attracting and further strengthening ultra right-wing forces. …

The student union to which Méric belonged, Union Syndicale Solidaires, expressed its anger against the killing and warned against “the climate of hate sustained by the political speeches that stigmatise and are not exclusive to the National Front and fascist groups.”

Thousands of protesters gathered outside the town hall in Argenteuil near Paris on Friday of last week. They were enraged and upset after a series of racist attacks against Muslim women: here.

A pregnant Muslim woman who was attacked in a Paris suburb has miscarried her baby, her lawyer said on Tuesday: here.

It took the state five years to bring to trial the three nationalist skinheads implicated in the June 5, 2013, murder of anti-fascist student Clément Méric. Two face charges of voluntary violence involuntarily leading to death, a less serious charge than that of involuntary homicide initially demanded by the Paris prosecutor, a third of having participated in the fight. The trial started on Tuesday and is expected to close today: here.

French far-right tough defends fascist murder of Méric: “He asked for it”: here.

Related articles

• vigil for murdered French antifa Meric Clement in montreal (alwaysantifascist.wordpress.com)
• Nazi thugs kill French activist (socialistworker.co.uk)
• Thousands march in memory of murdered French anti-fascist Clément Méric (socialistworker.co.uk)
• France to ban violent neo-Nazi groups as eight claim self-defence over ‘anti-fascist’ student Clément Méric’s death (independent.co.uk)
• Eight held over killing of teenage anti-fascist campaigner (guardian.co.uk)