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France: widening anti-police riots provoke government crisis
Nightly riots and clashes in the Paris suburbs, between the police and youth mainly of North African and African descent, are entering their second week. A thousand police officers were deployed Wednesday night in Seine-Saint-Denis, northwest of Paris, and half of the department’s 40 towns were affected by violence. Shots have been fired at police officers, and one official spokesman described events as a descent into civil war.
The conflicts have provoked a severe crisis for the French government. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has cancelled a scheduled visit to Canada, and Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy has pulled out of a visit to Afghanisan and Pakistan. Emergency meetings of the government of de Villepin and President Jacques Chirac have been held to discuss the situation.
The rioting began on the evening of October 27 after two youth were electrocuted when they climbed onto an electrical transformer while fleeing from the police. The deaths of the boys, in the northern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, sparked confrontations between youth and 400 to 500 riot police dispatched by Sarkozy. Violent protests and clashes with armed riot police have continued every night since and have spread to other working class suburbs.
The eruptions are the product of desperate poverty, mass unemployment and a vicious, openly racist law-and-order campaign spearheaded by Sarkozy, who has been considered the main rival to Chirac within the Gaullist Union for a Popular Party (UMP) and the leading contender to replace him in the next presidential election. Sarkozy has sent armed police into the immigrant slums and used terms such as “scum” and “gangrene” to describe their inhabitants.
On Wednesday, a council of ministers meeting was held, as well as a meeting of Gaullist deputies to the National Assembly. A question session was held in the National Assembly, at which Socialist Party and Communist Party deputies criticised Sarkozy, who sat mute. The deputies blamed him for instigating a social explosion through his law-and-order policies and provocative statements. De Villepin answered for him, trying to present a united government front. However, it was widely reported that deputies at the closed Gaullist meeting had heatedly attacked Sarkozy.
At the council of ministers, Chirac asked for a plan for urban renovation to be accelerated. He relieved Sarkozy of his responsibility for the preparation of the plan to prevent delinquency and entrusted it to de Villepin, who thereupon announced that he would be working for “equal opportunities” and “a plan of action” for youth employment in Seine-Saint-Denis, the department where Clichy and many other such communities are concentrated and the scene of a dozen outbreaks since October 27. De Villepin is Sarkozy’s most likely rival for the presidency in 2007.
The provocative language used by Sarkozy against the youth on suburban housing estates has been part of his attempt to mobilise a right-wing and racist movement under his leadership and that of the UMP. He hoped that this would not only secure his succession as president, but also provide popular support for the attacks on the working class required to break its resistance to the destruction of the welfare state and labour rights.
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n04.shtml
The rioting began on the evening of October 27 after two youth were electrocuted when they climbed onto an electrical transformer while fleeing from the police. The deaths of the boys, in the northern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, sparked confrontations between youth and 400 to 500 riot police dispatched by Sarkozy. Violent protests and clashes with armed riot police have continued every night since and have spread to other working class suburbs.
The eruptions are the product of desperate poverty, mass unemployment and a vicious, openly racist law-and-order campaign spearheaded by Sarkozy, who has been considered the main rival to Chirac within the Gaullist Union for a Popular Party (UMP) and the leading contender to replace him in the next presidential election. Sarkozy has sent armed police into the immigrant slums and used terms such as “scum” and “gangrene” to describe their inhabitants.
On Wednesday, a council of ministers meeting was held, as well as a meeting of Gaullist deputies to the National Assembly. A question session was held in the National Assembly, at which Socialist Party and Communist Party deputies criticised Sarkozy, who sat mute. The deputies blamed him for instigating a social explosion through his law-and-order policies and provocative statements. De Villepin answered for him, trying to present a united government front. However, it was widely reported that deputies at the closed Gaullist meeting had heatedly attacked Sarkozy.
At the council of ministers, Chirac asked for a plan for urban renovation to be accelerated. He relieved Sarkozy of his responsibility for the preparation of the plan to prevent delinquency and entrusted it to de Villepin, who thereupon announced that he would be working for “equal opportunities” and “a plan of action” for youth employment in Seine-Saint-Denis, the department where Clichy and many other such communities are concentrated and the scene of a dozen outbreaks since October 27. De Villepin is Sarkozy’s most likely rival for the presidency in 2007.
The provocative language used by Sarkozy against the youth on suburban housing estates has been part of his attempt to mobilise a right-wing and racist movement under his leadership and that of the UMP. He hoped that this would not only secure his succession as president, but also provide popular support for the attacks on the working class required to break its resistance to the destruction of the welfare state and labour rights.
Read More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n04.shtml
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Fresh rioting on the outskirts of Paris spilled into Friday as gangs of youths continued their rampage for the eighth consecutive night.
Police said more than 160 cars were torched in the Paris region and 33 in the provinces, but the night seemed calmer than Thursday when 315 vehicles were burnt in the Ile-de-France region around the French capital.
Buses, fire engines and police were again pelted with stoned in the Paris suburbs, with five policemen reported slightly injured by projectiles, but there were fewer direct confrontations between police and "troublemakers", according to a police spokesman.
One of the worst incidents took place at Neuilly-sur-Marne where police vans came under fire from pellet pistols, but nobody was hurt. Neuilly-sur-Marne is in the worst-hit northeastern region of Seine-Saint-Denis, where 1300 officers were deployed, and more than 30 people were arrested there and elsewhere.
A fire was started in a primary school in Stains, as police were targeted by a group of 30 to 40 people near a synagogue.
Paris firemen were fighting a blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis. Dutch truckers told an AFP reporter that they had seen a group of youths briefly enter the building.
Copycat rampages
And for the first time since the troubles erupted on Thursday last week, there were sporadic signs of copycat rampages elsewhere in France.
Police said several cars in the eastern city of Dijon were set alight, while similar attacks took place in the western Seine-Maritime region and the Bouches-du-Rhone in the south of the country.
The sporadic incidents were a scaled-back version of the ferocious rioting that erupted eight days ago in Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the troubled area of housing projects marked by soaring unemployment, delinquency and a sense of despair.
Facing mounting pressure, Villepin told parliament that restoring order was his "absolute priority."
The rioting was a direct challenge to the authority of the French government and to de Villepin in particular.
Villepin on Thursday vowed that authorities "will not give in" to the violence and would make restoring order their "absolute top priority".
"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," he declared
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/153CC963-9001-4B26-B2EA-3F187B8FA4AB.htm
Police said more than 160 cars were torched in the Paris region and 33 in the provinces, but the night seemed calmer than Thursday when 315 vehicles were burnt in the Ile-de-France region around the French capital.
Buses, fire engines and police were again pelted with stoned in the Paris suburbs, with five policemen reported slightly injured by projectiles, but there were fewer direct confrontations between police and "troublemakers", according to a police spokesman.
One of the worst incidents took place at Neuilly-sur-Marne where police vans came under fire from pellet pistols, but nobody was hurt. Neuilly-sur-Marne is in the worst-hit northeastern region of Seine-Saint-Denis, where 1300 officers were deployed, and more than 30 people were arrested there and elsewhere.
A fire was started in a primary school in Stains, as police were targeted by a group of 30 to 40 people near a synagogue.
Paris firemen were fighting a blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis. Dutch truckers told an AFP reporter that they had seen a group of youths briefly enter the building.
Copycat rampages
And for the first time since the troubles erupted on Thursday last week, there were sporadic signs of copycat rampages elsewhere in France.
Police said several cars in the eastern city of Dijon were set alight, while similar attacks took place in the western Seine-Maritime region and the Bouches-du-Rhone in the south of the country.
The sporadic incidents were a scaled-back version of the ferocious rioting that erupted eight days ago in Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the troubled area of housing projects marked by soaring unemployment, delinquency and a sense of despair.
Facing mounting pressure, Villepin told parliament that restoring order was his "absolute priority."
The rioting was a direct challenge to the authority of the French government and to de Villepin in particular.
Villepin on Thursday vowed that authorities "will not give in" to the violence and would make restoring order their "absolute top priority".
"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," he declared
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/153CC963-9001-4B26-B2EA-3F187B8FA4AB.htm
PARIS, November4 , 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Young immigrants again on Thursday, November3 , stoned police and set cars ablaze as France's worst rioting in more than a decade raged for its eighth straight night with Interior Minster Nicolas Sarkozy saying that the violence was "perfectly organized."
In a worrying sign, the rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris since October 27 spread, for the first time, to other parts of the country, to Dijon, Marseille and Normandy, and inside the capital itself, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Overnight Thursday, more than 500 vehicles and several businesses were set on fire, and 78 people arrested in the Paris area, according to police.
Most of the arson happened in the low-income neighborhoods that lie well outside the city, far from its famous monuments and tourist sights, although seven cars were also burnt in poorer northern and eastern districts in central Paris.
The riots have also taken on an increasingly dangerous tone, with buckshot fired at riot squad vans -- and prosecutors revealing that a handicapped woman was deliberately set on fire the night before.
According to prosecutors Friday, November4 , the56 -year-old woman was unable to get off a bus targeted by a Molotov cocktail late Wednesday, November 2 , in the northern Paris suburb of Sevran.
She was allegedly doused with petrol by one youth, then others threw a flaming rag on her. Rescued by the driver, she was taken to hospital with severe burns to 20 percent of her body.
The rioting -- sparked last week by the deaths by electrocution of two young immigrants who hid in an electrical sub-station in the northeast neighborhood of Clichy-sous-Bois to escape a police identity check, is the worst France has seen since the first troubles broke out in deprived high-immigration neighborhoods in the late1980 s.
Those responsible are sons of families from France's former Arab and African colonial territories, who have said in interviews that they are protesting economic misery, racial discrimination and provocative policing.
Organized
Speaking on French television late Thursday, Sarkozy said the violence was being orchestrated by unknown organizers.
"What we have been witnessing ... has nothing spontaneous about it. It was perfectly organized. We are trying to find out by who and how," he said.
The minister -- who has ambitions to become president after elections in 2007 -- also rejected accusations that his tough rhetoric had fuelled the rioters' anger.
He has described delinquent suburban youth as "racaille" or rabble, and said crime-ridden areas need to be "cleaned with a power-hose."
The violence has badly rattled the government of President Jacques Chirac, which is wavering between the "zero tolerance" policies of Sarkozy and calls for a more conciliatory approach to take account of the rioters' grievances.
More than1 , 300police were deployed in a vain attempt to restore order around Paris, following a vow from Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that "I will not allow organized gangs to make the law in the suburbs."
Marine Le Pen, daughter of extreme-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and deputy leader of his National Front party, called for a state of emergency to be declared in the worst-hit areas.
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-11/04/article05.shtml
In a worrying sign, the rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris since October 27 spread, for the first time, to other parts of the country, to Dijon, Marseille and Normandy, and inside the capital itself, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Overnight Thursday, more than 500 vehicles and several businesses were set on fire, and 78 people arrested in the Paris area, according to police.
Most of the arson happened in the low-income neighborhoods that lie well outside the city, far from its famous monuments and tourist sights, although seven cars were also burnt in poorer northern and eastern districts in central Paris.
The riots have also taken on an increasingly dangerous tone, with buckshot fired at riot squad vans -- and prosecutors revealing that a handicapped woman was deliberately set on fire the night before.
According to prosecutors Friday, November4 , the56 -year-old woman was unable to get off a bus targeted by a Molotov cocktail late Wednesday, November 2 , in the northern Paris suburb of Sevran.
She was allegedly doused with petrol by one youth, then others threw a flaming rag on her. Rescued by the driver, she was taken to hospital with severe burns to 20 percent of her body.
The rioting -- sparked last week by the deaths by electrocution of two young immigrants who hid in an electrical sub-station in the northeast neighborhood of Clichy-sous-Bois to escape a police identity check, is the worst France has seen since the first troubles broke out in deprived high-immigration neighborhoods in the late1980 s.
Those responsible are sons of families from France's former Arab and African colonial territories, who have said in interviews that they are protesting economic misery, racial discrimination and provocative policing.
Organized
Speaking on French television late Thursday, Sarkozy said the violence was being orchestrated by unknown organizers.
"What we have been witnessing ... has nothing spontaneous about it. It was perfectly organized. We are trying to find out by who and how," he said.
The minister -- who has ambitions to become president after elections in 2007 -- also rejected accusations that his tough rhetoric had fuelled the rioters' anger.
He has described delinquent suburban youth as "racaille" or rabble, and said crime-ridden areas need to be "cleaned with a power-hose."
The violence has badly rattled the government of President Jacques Chirac, which is wavering between the "zero tolerance" policies of Sarkozy and calls for a more conciliatory approach to take account of the rioters' grievances.
More than1 , 300police were deployed in a vain attempt to restore order around Paris, following a vow from Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that "I will not allow organized gangs to make the law in the suburbs."
Marine Le Pen, daughter of extreme-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and deputy leader of his National Front party, called for a state of emergency to be declared in the worst-hit areas.
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-11/04/article05.shtml
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