[File photo]

A meeting was held on March 28 between French police and representatives of Chinese communities, in response to recent riots set off by the fatal police shooting of a Chinese citizen in Paris.

“The French side sent 18 representatives to join the meeting, including the director of the Paris Police Prefecture and the warden of the 19th arrondissement of Paris, while 22 Chinese representatives participated in the meeting,” Wang Jiaqing, president of the Association des Chinois Resident en France, told Thepaper.cn during an interview, adding that the meeting lasted around three hours.

The meeting follows an incident in which three police officers entered a 57-year-old Chinese national’s home in Paris and shot him dead on March 26. The victim, surnamed Liu, was reportedly involved in a domestic dispute. The killing prompted many Chinese people in France to protest on March 27. As the protest movement grew, 35 protestors were eventually arrested.

“The French side told us that the police officer who shot Liu has been suspended and is now under investigation, while two police departments have initiated independent investigation procedures,” Wang said.

Liu’s death comes after years of racial tensions in Paris and its surrounding suburbs. In 2016, 49-year-old French-Chinese tailor Zhang Chaolin was fatally assaulted by a group of young men in Aubervilliers, which ignited the fury of local Chinese communities. After that incident, many condemned the French government’s failure to curb racial discrimination and violence.

“I am utterly shocked by the shooting. Discrimination against the French-Chinese is a problem that has long gone unremedied. The long-held stereotype of Chinese people as economically successful yet socially inactive has put us in an awkward position, as the government does not pay much attention to our needs, and criminals treat us like easy targets,” Zhang Chen, a Chinese national living in Paris, told the People’s Daily Online via email.

Echoing Zhang, Lu Ximing (pseudonym), a 28-year-old Chinese student at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, criticized the accusation by police that Liu assaulted the officers as “groundless finger-pointing.” According to French police, the officer that shot Liu fired in self-defense after Liu wounded another officer with a “bladed weapon.”

“Rumors circulating in Chinese communities indicate that Liu was cutting up a fish with scissors and had not hurt anyone. This explanation has been confirmed by the victim’s daughter, and I see no reason why an unarmed old man would risk his life to attack fully armed police officers -- that just does not make any sense,” said Lu.

In response to the impassioned appeal by Chinese communities, Paris police have promised to stage a memorial and release 26 out of the 35 arrested protestors, according to Nouvelles d'Europe, a Paris-based Chinese newspaper.