PARIS: China on Tuesday called on France to protect its citizens after police in Paris killed a Chinese father of five, sparking violent protests in which 35 people were arrested.

Paris police said around 150 “members of the Asian community” gathered late on Monday outside a police station in the north-east of the capital and clashes broke out.

Three officers were slightly injured in the confrontation and one police vehicle was damaged by an incendiary device.

The angry demonstrators were protesting after a police officer shot and killed the Chinese man on Sunday night.

A police source told AFP that officers were called to his house after reports of a domestic dispute. The source said the man attacked the officer with a knife “as soon as the door opened”, injuring him. A police colleague then opened fire, killing the Chinese man, authorities say.

Lawyer Calvin Job said the family of the dead man “totally disputes this version of events.” “He didn’t injure anyone,” Job said, adding that the man had been “trimming fish with a pair of scissors” when the police came to the door.

As tempers frayed between Paris and Beijing, the Chinese foreign ministry said it had filed an official complaint to France over the events in the French capital.

Beijing calls on Paris to “guarantee the safety and legal rights and interests of Chinese citizens in France and to treat the reaction of Chinese people to this incident in a rational way,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing. “Meanwhile, we hope that our citizens ... in France can express their wishes and demands in a lawful and reasonable way,” the spokeswoman added.

Newly appointed French Interior Minister Matthias Fekl condemned the violence at the protest and said the security forces had his “full support”. He called for calm “to allow the judicial process under way to proceed in an orderly fashion”.

The victim’s family insist that there was no domestic dispute and a neighbour had called the police after hearing shouting.

“Police forced open the door of the apartment, pushing him back,” Job said. The man did not rush towards the officers, and the police “shot without warning”, he said.

Lulu Zen, 27, who said he was the victim’s nephew, said the family believed the police were “hiding the truth”. “My cousins saw their father killed by policemen,” he said.

However, a source close to the investigation said that while the man’s five children had been in the apartment at the time they had not seen the shooting.

Estimates put the size of the Chinese community in Paris at between 200,000 and 300,000. Many of the first-generation Chinese nationals who live in the French capital came here in the 1980s and many work in the textile industry.

French police have come under fire for suspected violence in recent months following the highly publicised case of a black youth worker allegedly sodomised with a police baton.

Several demonstrations have been staged since the Feb 2 incident involving the 22-year-old.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2017