The video depicts the cruel reality of life in the ghettos, where drugs and violence are omnipresent, and it features a sequence in which a young drug-dealer steals a bag of drugs from a lady who was 'looking after it' for other drug-dealers. His identity is discovered and there follows a scene in which he is abducted by armed men, driven to a lonely spot outside the city after being handcuffed and beaten up, thrust down onto the the ground, and shot in the head as payback. The killers then pour petrol over his body and set it alight before leaving the scene.
The 'victim' was played by 19-year-old Nabil Sedik, a young man from one of Marseille's poorer areas, and the drug-minding woman was played by his mother.
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The harrowing scenes contained in the video were of course fictional, and Nabil Sedik walked away unscathed from that fictional killing field, but real life underworld revenge killings such as that shown in it are not the stuff of fiction. They are a fact of life, and they have occurred every 10 days in Marseille since January of last year. The most recent of those executions took place a few days ago, when a young man was kidnapped in Marseille. His body was later discovered in the boot of a burnt-out car. He had been shot to death.
His name? Nabil Sedik.
His mother buried him on Tuesday.
And I thought it was bad in the US!
ReplyDeleteI can definitively say that the France you are showing me is not the same France I used to know.
Nadege, the France you used to know is still there. As for violence in Marseille; drug trafficking; executions, they have been around for a while, unfortunately. Remember the excellent movie "French Connection," shot in the 1970s as I recall? Veronique (French Girl in Seattle)
DeleteHello Veronique. Yup, it's still there, but there's a difference. Back in the 60's and 70's gangland and drug-dealing disputes led to killings, that milieu was highly secret and mostly unknown to the public. In fact it was almost seem by the public as being somewhat romantic because it didn't affect them, as their 'work' was majoritarily carried out behind closed doors. Today however, gangs and drug-dealers terrorise ordinary citizens in the very areas they live in. They work openly and citizens who complain may find their cars burnt or their teeth smashed.
DeleteIt's the same with British underworld crime. Villains at that time such as the Kray brothers may have inspired terror in their foes but ordinary people had nothing to fear. Today? As in France, it has all become street-level and it devastates whole communities.
Major bank robbers, jewel thieves and others are a thing of the past. Today it's just des p'tits voyous et 'm'as tu vu' young caïds in BMWs...
Hi Nadege! Agreed, but then again the same is true of England or many other western countries. The world has changed so much, and these are not happy times compared to the 60s and 70s. It has become a harder and more dog-eat-dog world. The reasons for that are many I suppose, and they could arguably include the demographic composition of countries, major lifestyle changes in an ever-changing world be they desired or not, and the relative decline of the West which complements the rise of other world regions..
DeleteOops, my last comment should have 'replied' to your comment Nadege, but I messed up. :)
DeleteHaving read again all the last few posts and answers, I wrote on this saturday's post that France is getting more intolerant and it is a question of education, but reading your answers in this post, I am not so sure. I would be very frightened if I lived in France. Frankly, I don't know how we can turn things around. Definitively not by banning headscarfs... From the get go, France didn't handle the North African immigration well. We now have the "us against them" mentality, no integration... This is not good at all. Maybe the way you are describing events, makes it look bleaker than it is? Maybe it is even worse than you think? Maybe it is better that both of us think. Lots of lessons are going to have to be learned on both sides. It is also playing very well in the hands of the 1 % who couldn't careless about anything but their own interest.
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