In Memory of Adama Traoré
Photography by and copyright © Zoe Marie Bel, 2024. All rights reserved.
The death of Adama Traoré on July 19th 2016 is a true event, folded into the fiction of the novella.
In Beaumont-sur-Oise, a surburb of Paris in which he was also born, Adama, a Black Frenchman, fled a police ID-check. He was subsequently pinned to the ground by three officers as they arrested him. Soon afterward, Adama complained of breathing difficulties and lost consciousness. A little over an hour later, in the courtyard of a police station in nearby Persan, Adama died.
A state report proposed heart failure as the cause of death and that underlying medical conditions and cannabis use were contributing factors. An autopsy commissioned by Adama's family asserted that his death was caused by suffocation he experienced during his arrest.
Although Adama's family and supporters continue to agitate for justice, French magistrates closed the investigation into his death in September 2023, with no charges filed against any officer.
The street art pictured above highlights the parallels between Adama Traoré's death and the murder of George Floyd in the United States on May 25th 2020. ("Je ne peux plus respirer" is French for "I can't breathe".) These artworks were discovered by author Zoe Marie Bel in the streets around The Centre Pompidou in August 2020. Efforts to contact the artist "sevenparisstreet" (whose tag is also pictured above) have been unsuccessful. If you are (or know) the artist, and would like to discuss this 2020 artwork, please write to office@scatterpunk.com.
- "The sixth mural I found was for Adama Traoré, a name well-known in Paris. He was Black, young, and male. Rather, he had been. Having that precise combination of identities in France, Val's poem proposed, is why it was no surprise that Adama was now dead."
- – Part Three, 'Bagnolet'; Chapter 2