France: Police attack defenders of immigrant school children

The afternoon before police had stopped a young undocumented Chinese woman who had come to the school for her niece. After a half-hour argument, the school’s headmistress, Valérie Boukobza, managed to win her release, although not before police searched the woman. Residents and protesters were thus alerted to the police presence in the area.

The following day police officers were making identity checks in the vicinity of the Rampal school when they arrested the grandfather, a sans papier (person without documents), whose name was not made public. They surrounded the café where the grandfather was waiting for his grandsons to come out of school. Members of the Education without Borders Network (Réseau Education Sans Frontières—RESF) and local residents tried to place themselves between the grandfather and the police, and stood in front of the police car which had come to arrest the older man. Police responded by threatening to release dogs on the protesters and then attacking them with tear gas, near the entrance to the infant school. Videos of the incident are circulating on the Internet.

Three days later Boukobza was summoned by the police, believing she was merely being called in as a witness to the events. She was then held in custody for seven hours on suspicion of “insulting behaviour to the police and damage to property,” because she had protested the arrest of the Chinese man. A crowd of a hundred people gathered outside the police station and remained until she was released.

Boukobza categorically denied the accusations. She asserted in a statement, “What we did last Tuesday in Rue Rampal, many others would have done in the same way. It is only carrying out one’s duty to protect children and their families and engage in peaceful resistance to a form of oppression.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/fran-a06.shtml