PARIS (AP) – Violent clashes in Paris between baton-wielding police and protesters outraged at the police killing of a Chinese man in his home have seen three police officers injured and 35 protesters arrested, authorities said Tuesday.
Demonstrators, who were from the Asian community, gathered Monday night outside the multicultural 19th district’s police station in the northeast of the French capital, said Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.
The crowds of protesters gathered in homage to a Chinese man killed Sunday by a police officer, angry at reports that he was shot in his home in front of his children while he was cutting up fish and didn’t attack. Police say the officer fired in self-defense during a raid because the victim, whom Chinese media say is Chinese, wounded an officer with a “bladed weapon.”
China’s Foreign Ministry expressed concern to French authorities on Tuesday over the killing of the man – shot, it said, by plainclothes officers.
With chants of “murderers” and candles that spelled “opposition to violence” lining the road Monday night, scores of demonstrators broke down barricades, threw projectiles and set fire to a car during the brutal clashes with myriad police that lasted several hours.