Police dispersed the crowd from Paris's huge Place de la République this Saturday. Others were seen marching peacefully near the square, largely outnumbered by police forces.
The Paris police department said in a decision published on its website that it had banned the planned demonstration because a "context of tensions".
Ten days ago, riots were sparked by the killing of Nahel M, a 17-year-old teenager in a Parisian suburb.
The demonstration was called by the family of Adama Traoré, a black Frenchman whose death in police custody in July 2016 is each year marked by protests.
Organisers had sought to move it central Paris after it was banned in Beaumont-sur-Oise, the Paris suburb where Traore died.
"We're marching for young people, to denounce police violence," Traoré's sister Assa told the crowd on Saturday. "They want to hide our dead."
"We still enjoy freedom of expression in France, but freedom of assembly, in particular, is under threat", a health worker who came to the gathering in spite of the ban told Reuters. A ban, which he called "shocking."
Authorities also banned a demonstration in the northern city of Lille on Saturday, while a march in Marseille took place with a changed trajectory, ordered out of the city centre.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said this week that more than 3,000 people, mostly teenagers, had been arrested in six nights of riots that ended a week ago.
Some 2,500 buildings were damaged.
French authorities and politicians including President Emmanuel Macron have denied institutional racism within the country's law enforcement agencies.
The French foreign ministry denied on Saturday that the country's legal system is racist, a day after the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called for France to address "the structural and systemic causes of racial discrimination, including in law enforcement".
"Any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by law enforcement in France is unfounded", the foreign ministry said.
(Reuters)
