French President Emmanuel Macron slammed for partying with Elton John as France burns in mass riots

• Emmanuel Macron attended an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday night.
• It comes as mass riots are ravaging France following the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old.
• Macron has said rioters are exploiting the death and urged parents to keep children at home.

French President Emmanuel Macron is being slammed for partying with Elton John as riots rage across France, The Telegraph reported.

Macron was pictured dancing along at the singer's farewell tour performance the day after a 17-year-old of North African descent was killed by French police earlier this week, sparking mass protests across the country.

Thierry Mariani, an MEP with Marine Le Pen's National Rally, said Macron was "totally irresponsible" and quoted Ecclesiastes, per The Telegraph. "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child," he said. "While France was on fire, Macron preferred to applaud Elton John."

An Instagram picture posted by Elton John's husband, David Furnish, of the couple arm-in-arm with a smiling Macron and his wife, Brigitte Marie-Claude Macron. was later taken down, but not before people had made a slew of negative comments.

"France is burning, and the president of France is going to the Elton John concert. Macron is below everything," wrote one per The Telgraph.

Macron, a former Rothschild investment banker in Paris who has often been accused of being out of touch with the general public, has condemned the riots, calling them "unjustifiable," Le Monde reported.

"The last few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations, but also schools and town halls – against institutions and the Republic," Macron told ministers, per the report, while he acknowledged that the killing was "inexplicable and unforgivable."

Forty-five thousand additional police officers, including special forces, have been deployed to the streets as the riots continue to rage on, with over 1,300 arrests taking place on the fourth night of unrest, per The Guardian.

The president has gone as far as to accuse the rioters of exploiting the death of 17-year-old Nahel M and urged parents to keep their children at home, per the BBC. He has also pleaded with social-media companies like TikTok and Snapchat to remove "the most sensitive types of content" and help authorities find the names of those organizing the protests.

Nahel was shot from point-blank range after refusing to stop for a traffic stop. He died after emergency services attended the scene.

The shooting has led to serious questions about racism in the French police force, and the UN's human rights office said the riots were an opportunity for France "to address deep issues of racism in law enforcement," per the BBC.

"We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down," Dominique Sopo of SOS Racisme, a human rights organization, said, per The Guardian.

"The issue here is how we make it so that we have a police force that, when they see Blacks and Arabs, use racist terms against them and, in some cases, shoot them in the head," Sopo added.

Other Western police forces dealing with such issues. The UK's London Metropolitan Police were found to be "institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic," according to an official report.

US police forces have also been involved in a series of racially charged incidents over the last few years, including the killing of George Floyd, which sparked mass protests and rioting across the nation.