11/9/2005: A state of emergency was announced November 8, along with the call-up of police reservists, authorizing local governments to impose curfews and permits police to conduct raids and searches without warrants. The emergency decree, made possible by a 1955 law, will be in effect for 12 days, but the National Assembly can pass a law extending it, “if necessary.” Under the decree, local officials have the power to place people under house arrest and demand that weapons be handed over. Public spaces can be closed down. The law gives the government the power to restrict freedom of the press and freedom of assembly and to shut down theaters. The mass general strike of 1968 did not precipitate such a state of emergency. The 1955 law is most associated, and certainly in the minds of the older generation of North African descent, with the violence and torture perpetrated by the French state on the Algerian population and Algerian immigrants in France in the 1950s and 1960s. WSWS: Oppose the state of emergency in France | Sarkozy threatens mass deportations | Militants attack mosque in bid to reignite French riots | France: racism, poverty lead to violence | Paris march planned amid unrest | Boris Kagarlitsky on the unrest in France

11/8/2005: Jose Bove has urged the French parliament to debate the root causes of crisis, describing the unrest as "a revolution by desperate youths who have lost all hopes." Muslim thinker Tareq Ramadan blamed the entire political class in France for the riots, saying the political class has been "blind" to what has been happening in the suburbs, with their unemployed youth of Arab and African origin and bleak high-rises. Bove has also asked Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to apologize for his anti-immigrant remarks. The interior minister has been under fire for his "zero-tolerance" policy, which caused violence in the areas. The French Communist Party, the Greens and the Socialist Party have joined forces, demanding the sacking of Sarkozy over his handling of the crisis. He has been accused of stoking passions by calling troublemakers "racaille" or rabble, and saying that crime-ridden areas need to be "cleaned with a power-hose."
Read More | Q&A - Riots in France: Causes and Consequences | French Unrest Sends Shockwaves Across Europe | Do not Put Islamic Spin on French Riots | The Rebellion Spreads to Belgium | France is clinging to an ideal that's been pickled into dogma | Juan Cole: The Problem with Frenchness

11/7/2005: Urban unrest escalated around France this weekend as youths continued rioting throughout the country for an eleventh straight night. On Sunday, rioters opened fire on police in a working-class suburb of Paris, wounding ten officers. On Saturday night, rioting spread from the Paris suburbs into the more well-off districts. Also on Saturday, the rioting reached inside the French capital for the first time, with youths setting fire to more than 30 cars in central Paris.
Read More | LCR refuses to take a stand on police repression | The Explosion in the Suburbs | Rebellion in Real Time | 10 Officers Shot as Riots Worsen in French Cities | French violence hits fresh peak | French government and opposition back intensified repression

On Thursday, October 27th, 2005, a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. when police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.

On the morning of Saturday October 29th, 1000 joined in a march organised by religious associations and mosques in Clichy-sous-Bois. Representatives of the Muslim community appealed for calm and marchers wore T-shirts saying mort pour rien ("dead for nothing"). The mayor of Clichy, Claude Dilain, called for an enquiry into the deaths of the two boys. All eyes were on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The response? As people were gathering in the mosques for the Night of Destiny, the most sacred night in the month of Ramadan, a night people usually spent at the mosque, the empty streets of the Cité du Chêne Pointu filled with about 400 CRS militant riot police and gendarmes, blocking off the neighborhood. Yet very few people allowed themselves to be provoked into breaking the sanctity of this night, despite racist insults from the police. On Sunday, however, provocation turned into outrage as the women's prayer room at de Bousquets mosque was teargassed by police. As people stumbled out gasping for air, the policemen called the women "whores", "bitches" and other insults.

Ever since that night, Clichy-sous-Bois has been burning, with the insurrection spreading on Monday to Seine-Saint-Denis and on Tuesday night (November 1st) to nine other Parisian suburbs. A week after the death of the two boys, the uprising is spreading throughout France -- to Dijon, Bouches-du-Rhone and Rouen.

Read More | Reports from Paris IMC (fr): one | two | three | four | Eyewitness account in English: UK IMC | kersplebedeb

Deep roots of Paris riots | Massive Riots All Over France | Eyewitness to Paris riots charges police with deliberate provocation | Widening anti-police riots provoke government crisis | Wikipeda: 2005 Paris suburb riots