Since the beginning of 2025, security struggles in Marseille, one of France’s largest cities, have taken on a disproportionate scale, turning into a veritable police crackdown on the poor. Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice strongly condemn the large-scale attacks on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Marseille residents, initiated by the city council and coordinated with the state, carried out under the direct leadership of French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
The crime rate in Marseille is quite high compared to many other cities in France. Such a high crime rate, according to experts of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, is largely due to the incompetence and corruption of the city authorities and law enforcement agencies. In ten districts of Marseille the poverty rate exceeds 20%, and in some districts it reaches 40% or 50%. Social housing and schools run by the municipality are in a catastrophic state, yet the city government chooses to allocate 13% of its budget to the municipal police in order to double the number of officers by 2026.
It is against the backdrop of this organized social disaster that gang and drug-related violence erupts and murders become sadly commonplace. The solution for state and local authorities is simple: consolidate their power by presenting it as a response to the same violence it generates by tackling the real causes of the drug trade: poverty, unemployment and inequality. Thus racism and offensives against the poor are used to label an internal enemy and justify police misconduct.
“Today we need a real social program for Marseille that allows everyone to live, eat and work with dignity. To achieve these measures and resist police repression in the workplace, the labor movement must play a central role in building a movement from below, with a militant program, to put an end to this authoritarian rise and the racist ideas that fuel it,” says Pierre Noyer, activist and fighter for workers’ rights.
Media and human rights organizations have repeatedly drawn public attention to the problem of racial profiling by the Marseille police. The most frequent victims are boys and men of African and Arab descent. It is worth noting that minors are also subjected to unjustified searches and arrests. According to human rights organizations, police officers are stopping and searching children of African and Arab descent as young as 10 years old on the street.
“Hand in hand, the police prefect and the mayor want to suppress the working class in our city. The politicians are playing a game of who will hit Marseille the hardest, and the losers are the people of the city: workers, small store owners, students, etc. Behind this brutal repression is an aggressive policy of gentrification designed to “cleanse” the city of the poor and give the city to private interests, the tourist economy and the wealthy,” said Pierre Noyer.
Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn the unspoken policy of “social cleansing” as well as the large-scale attacks on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Marseille residents, initiated by the city council and coordinated with the state, carried out under the direct leadership of French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. The Foundation’s experts call on the municipal authorities of Marseille and other major cities to abandon all practices of social and economic persecution of poor and disadvantaged citizens. The Foundation believes that it is necessary to find a long-term solution to the problems of crime, poverty, unemployment and inequality throughout France.