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France: Gaullist officials stoke up racism to justify state of emergency
Ministers and deputies of the ruling Gaullist party, the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), have issued statements calculated to whip up anti-immigrant and racist sentiment in order to justify the government’s unprecedented imposition of a three-month state of emergency.
The chairman of the UMP group in the National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, stated on Radio RTL last Wednesday that polygamy among African immigrant families was “certainly one of the causes” of three weeks of violent anti-police protests by immigrant youth in ghetto suburbs on the outskirts of Paris and many other French cities.
Accoyer added that the authorities had shown themselves to be “strangely lax” on the question. He also blamed the Plural Left government of Socialist Party Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (1997-2002) for its policies on reuniting immigrant families. Asked whether welfare payments should be withheld from the families of convicted rioters, he said, “It would be justified in some cases... but it should not be generalised.”
The youth violence had already substantially subsided by the time the National Assembly voted November 15 to extend by three months a state of emergency that had been decreed for 12 days by the cabinet and was due to run until November 21.
The 1955 law enabling the government to proclaim a state of emergency stipulates that an extension can be decided only by the National Assembly. It permits a sweeping expansion of police powers and curtailment of civil liberties.
The scapegoating of a small section of African immigrant families is an attempt to justify the massive assault on democratic rights which the state of emergency represents and channel popular opposition to the government’s right-wing social policies in a reactionary direction.
Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of the interior and chairman of the UMP, continued his provocative law-and-order and anti-immigrant rhetoric, telling Express magazine: “Let’s tell things as they are: the polygamy and acculturation of some families make it more difficult to integrate a young French person from black Africa than a young French person from elsewhere.” He vowed to prevent the ghetto housing estates from being taken over by “the men with beards.”
Gerard Larcher, junior minister for youth employment, told foreign journalists that polygamy was “one possible cause.” He added that polygamy sometimes caused anti-social behaviour and concluded, “As some of society manifests this anti-social behaviour, it is no surprise that some of them have difficulty finding work.”
The obvious aim of this sort of racist filth is to blame the immigrant population for the pervasive and entrenched conditions of mass unemployment, poverty, discrimination and police abuse that are the real causes of the eruption of protests that shook France this past month. Such statements have been combined with calls for measures to further restrict the right of immigrants to unite with their families in France.
More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n22.shtml
Accoyer added that the authorities had shown themselves to be “strangely lax” on the question. He also blamed the Plural Left government of Socialist Party Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (1997-2002) for its policies on reuniting immigrant families. Asked whether welfare payments should be withheld from the families of convicted rioters, he said, “It would be justified in some cases... but it should not be generalised.”
The youth violence had already substantially subsided by the time the National Assembly voted November 15 to extend by three months a state of emergency that had been decreed for 12 days by the cabinet and was due to run until November 21.
The 1955 law enabling the government to proclaim a state of emergency stipulates that an extension can be decided only by the National Assembly. It permits a sweeping expansion of police powers and curtailment of civil liberties.
The scapegoating of a small section of African immigrant families is an attempt to justify the massive assault on democratic rights which the state of emergency represents and channel popular opposition to the government’s right-wing social policies in a reactionary direction.
Nicolas Sarkozy, minister of the interior and chairman of the UMP, continued his provocative law-and-order and anti-immigrant rhetoric, telling Express magazine: “Let’s tell things as they are: the polygamy and acculturation of some families make it more difficult to integrate a young French person from black Africa than a young French person from elsewhere.” He vowed to prevent the ghetto housing estates from being taken over by “the men with beards.”
Gerard Larcher, junior minister for youth employment, told foreign journalists that polygamy was “one possible cause.” He added that polygamy sometimes caused anti-social behaviour and concluded, “As some of society manifests this anti-social behaviour, it is no surprise that some of them have difficulty finding work.”
The obvious aim of this sort of racist filth is to blame the immigrant population for the pervasive and entrenched conditions of mass unemployment, poverty, discrimination and police abuse that are the real causes of the eruption of protests that shook France this past month. Such statements have been combined with calls for measures to further restrict the right of immigrants to unite with their families in France.
More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n22.shtml
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