In France, police who killed teenager received more donation than victim

A campaign to raise money for the family of the policeman who shot dead French teenager Nahel Merzouk topped 1.47 million euros ($1.6 million) on Tuesday, far outstripping donations to Nahel's family and causing shame and anger among many French people.

Fundraising pledges for the family of Nahel Merzouk stood at 352,000 euros ($383,000).

The fallout from the shooting, and from the wave of violent protests it triggered in France's poor suburbs, continued to dominate political debate, with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne advocating in parliament a crackdown on young protesters and their parents.

President Emmanuel Macron hosted a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with 302 mayors of towns where rioting took place, described as "cathartic" by one of the participants, and told them violence was subsiding.

"Will the return to calm last? I would be prudent, but the peak that we experienced these past few days is over," Macron was quoted as saying.

After listening to a range of views from the mayors, he said some humility was necessary as there was no consensus emerging on how best to respond to everything that had happened.

Macron told the mayors his government would introduce an emergency law aimed at making it easier to rebuild burnt and damaged buildings and infrastructure by cutting red tape.

French news bulletins also focused heavily on the issue of the competing crowdfunding campaigns for Nahel Merzouk and the police officer, a subject that drew vitriolic reactions from people, laying bare the profound polarisation of French society.

The fundraising effort on behalf of the officer, who is in custody charged with voluntary homicide, was launched on the GoFundMe platform by far-right media personality Jean Messiha, who received more than 72,000 private donations.

Leftwing politicians branded the fundraiser as shameful and called for it to be shut down, while the far-right defended a police force it says is a daily target for violence in the low-income suburbs that ring French cities.

"This police officer is the victim of a national witch-hunt and it is a disgrace," Messiha wrote on social media.

The June 27 shooting of Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algerian-Moroccan descent, unleashed violence on a scale that shocked France before police clamped down on the protesters.

Addressing lawmakers in parliament, Prime Minister Borne defended a tough law-and-order stance, saying the criminal justice system should ensure that even minor offences committed during the riots were prosecuted.

Responding to a left-wing opposition lawmaker who was calling for a clear condemnation of police violence and for a change to a law blamed by many police critics for a rise in the number of police shootings, Borne accused the lawmaker of not respecting the values of the republic.

Her speech did not address the deep vein of resentment of law enforcement agencies in the poor and racially mixed suburbs of major French cities - known as banlieues - where Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.