Captain of the French national football team, Kylian Mbappé, have put out a statement calling for calm to prevail and for violence to stop and calm to prevail amid widespread riots across the country.
The killing of a teenager, Nahel, in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris has sparked riots across the country since Tuesday.
The 17-year-old teenager was pulled over by two policemen on Tuesday for breaking traffic rules, prosecutors said.
Police initially reported that an officer shot at the teenager because he was driving his car at him, but this version of events was contradicted by a video circulating on social media.
The footage shows the two policemen standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver. A voice is heard saying: "You are going to get a bullet in the head."
The police who officer appears to fire at the driver at point-blank range has been lawfully charged for voluntary manslaughter.
Mbappé and Tchouaméni have put out a statement calling for calm to prevail and for violence to stop.
"Like all French people, we were marked and shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel", the statement reads. "Since this tragic event, we have been witnessing the expression of popular anger whose substance we understand, but whose form we cannot endorse.
"As many of us come from working-class neighborhoods, we also share these feelings of pain and sadness", explain the players. "But on top of this suffering, there is a feeling being powerless to a real process of self-destruction. Violence solves nothing, even less when it inevitably and tirelessly turns itself against those who express it, their families, loved ones and neighbours.
It is your property that you are destroying, your neighborhoods, your cities, your places of fulfillment and proximity." Les Bleus' statement ends by reiterating there are different peaceful and constructive ways of expressing discontent.
Picture : ONZE MONDIAL
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