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PARIS, Oct. 20 When the call went out about a car burglary in the raw suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine north of here last weekend, three officers in a patrol car rushed over and found themselves surrounded by 30 youths in in hoods throwing rocks and swinging bats and metal bars.
Members of a police union demonstrated Wednesday over a rash of assaults on police officers in Paris suburbs, where riots occurred a year ago.
Neither tear gas nor stun guns stopped the assault. Only when reinforcements arrived did the siege end. One officer was left with broken teeth and in need of 30 stitches to his face.
The attack was rough but not unique. In the last three weeks alone, three similar assaults on the police have occurred in these suburbs, which a year ago were aflame with the rage of unemployed, undereducated youth, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants.
In fact, with the anniversary of those riots approaching, spiking violent crime statistics across the area suggest not only that things have not improved, but that they also may well have worsened. Residents and experts say that fault lines run even deeper than before and that widespread violence may flare up again at any moment.
Tension is rising very dramatically, said Patrice Ribeiro, the deputy head of the Synergie Officiers police union. There is the will to kill.
Last month a leaked law enforcement memo warned of a climate of impunity in Seine-St.-Denis, the infamous district north of Paris that includes suburbs like Épinay-sur-Seine. It reported a 23 percent increase in violent robberies and a 14 percent increase in assaults in the district of 1.5 million people in the first half of this year, complaining that young, inexperienced police officers were overwhelmed and the court system was lax. Only one of 85 juveniles arrested during the unrest was jailed, it added.
In all of France, according to the Interior Ministry, 480 incidents of violence against the police were recorded in September, a 30 percent increase from the month before.
Next Friday is the first anniversary of the electrocution death of two teenagers as, according to some accounts at the time, they were running from the police in Clichy-sousBois. The tragedy set off a threeweek orgy of violence in which rioters throughout France torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed police officers and firefighters, plunging the country into what President Jacques Chirac called a profound malaise.
Despite numerous vows to make big changes, local officials and residents say the shock of last years unrest did not lead to a coherent plan to create new jobs, better housing and education and more social services or even to raise the consciousness of the citizenry.
Ours is a population that truly has been abandoned to its sad fate, said Claude Dilain, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois and a pediatrician who recently wrote a book about the plight of his town.
French society wants the poor to be squeezed into ghettos rather than have them living right next door, he said. It says, Put the poor out there in the suburbs, but avoid violence at all costs so that all goes well and we dont have to talk about them anymore. Our people feel betrayed. All the conditions are there for it to blow up again.
The Times October 21, 2006
Why 112 cars are burning every day
By Charles Bremner
A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs
FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of Frances suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.
Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. Were ready for it again. In fact it hasnt stopped, he added.
Before next weeks anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.
The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us, said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.
Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb, he told The Times.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who hopes to win the presidency next May, has once again taken the offensive, staging raids on the no-go areas and promising no mercy for the thugs who reign there.
With polls showing law and order as the top public concern, his presidential chances hang on his image as a tough cop.
M Sarkozys muscular approach is being challenged not just by Socialist opponents. President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.
National politics seem far from Clichy, a leafy town of hulking apartment buildings only ten miles but a universe away from the Elysée Palace. However, the Interior Minister is cited by the estate youths as the symbol of their anger. Sarko wants to wipe us out, clear us off the map, said Rachid, 19. They said they would help us after last year, but weve got nothing.
Rachid is to attend a march next Friday for Zyed and Bouna, the teenagers whose deaths in an electrical station sparked the rioting that engulfed the Seine-Saint-Denis département, known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois. The boys, aged 17 and 15, who were hiding from police when they were electrocuted, are seen in Clichy as martyrs. Amor Benna, 61, the Tunisian father of Zyed, appealed this week to the young to refrain from violence and use their votes for change. I dont want to see cars burning again, he said from his home on the Chêne Pointu estate. But the unhappiness was understandable, said M Benna, a street cleaner. The young were born here and they are French. But they have nothing. The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened.
ABC News
French police, youths clash in Paris suburb
Reuters
PARIS - French police and youths clashed in a Paris suburb on Sunday as tensions mounted ahead of the anniversary of riots last year that shocked the country and provoked renewed debate about the integration of immigrants.
A police spokesman said 30 to 50 individuals were involved in the clashes in Grigny south of Paris that started after youths set several cars on fire and torching a bus after ordering its passengers off.
"There are still some sporadic incidents, mostly stone throwing," he said.
In a statement, the Action Police CFTC police union urged the government to deploy "a visible and large number" of riot police to discourage youths from constantly attacking patrols.
In recent days police patrols in a number of towns across the country have been attacked by petrol bombs.
"This latest clash marks the progressive start of a repeat of the riots of November 2005," the statement said, referring to the incident in Grigny.
Article published Oct 22, 2006
Oct 22, 2006
French Police Face 'Permanent Intifada'
By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press Writer
On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests made.
The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.
One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.
National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted - and some now receive police escorts in such areas.
On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.
More broadly, worsening violence in France testifies to Europe's growing struggle to integrate its ethnic minorities. Some mainstream European politicians - adopting positions previously confined largely to far-right fringes - are suggesting that the minorities themselves are not doing enough to adapt to European mores.
In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, this month touched off a wide debate about the rights and obligations of Muslims by saying that he asks devout Muslim women to remove their veils when visiting his office. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Islam needs to modernize.
In France, a high school teacher received death threats, forcing him into hiding, after he wrote a newspaper editorial in September saying Muslim fundamentalists are trying to muzzle Europe's democratic liberties.
Ethnic integration and violence against police are both becoming issues in the campaign for the French presidency. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender on the right, said this month that those who do not love France do not have to stay, echoing a longtime slogan of the extreme-right National Front: "France, love it or leave it."
Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.
"Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned," he said in an interview.
Larger, more mainstream police unions sharply disagree that the suburban unrest has any religious basis. However, they do say that some youth gangs no longer seem content to throw stones or torch cars and instead appear determined to hurt police officers - or worse.
"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."
Sadio Sylla, an unemployed mother of three, watched the Oct. 13 ambush of the police patrol in Epinay-sur-Seine from her second-floor window. She, other witnesses and police union officials said up to 50 masked youths surged out from behind trees.
One of the three officers needed 30 stitches to his face after being struck by a rock.
The attack was one of at least four gang beatings of police in Parisian suburbs since Sept. 19. Early Friday, a dozen hooded people hurled stones, iron bars and bottles filled with gasoline at two police vehicles in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a flashpoint of last year's riots, said Guillaume Godet, a city hall spokesman. One officer required three stitches to his head.
Minority youths have long complained that police are more heavy-handed in their dealings with them than with whites, demanding their papers and frisking them for no apparent reason.
Such perceived ill-treatment fuels feelings of injustice, as do the difficulties that many youths from immigrant families have finding work.
Distrust and tension thrive. Rumors have flown around some housing projects that police are hoping to use the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week, to round up known troublemakers, on the basis that fasting all day will have made the youths weaker and easier to catch.
Police say that suggestion is ludicrous. However, they are on guard ahead of the first anniversary this week of last year's riots. That violence began after two youths who thought police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted to death.
Police unions suspect that the recent attacks may be an attempt to spark new riots.
"We are getting the impression these youths want a 'remake' of what happened last year," said Fred Lagache, national secretary of the Alliance police union. "The youths are trying to cause a police error to justify chaos."
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There are a lot of reasons why the French have worked against America in the War on Terror, especially Iraq. But I think that fear of their own Muslim population is one of the main reasons. It sucks when you have to clean up the debris of a failed colonial empire. Britain suffers from the same demographic malady, but unlike the French, the Brits have not let minority threats influence foreign policy, as least not yet.
Maybe, but I don't think so.
If France refused Iraq 2003, it was becasue it was not France's interest, and because it was illegal, against the international laws and the UN San Francisco treaty of 1945.
The biggest part of the french muslim population has no problem with the State and is not the cause of problems. But the focalisation of the medias on some groups of youthes, muslims, give the impression that the whole muslim youthes are against France and the State's authority. This is not true at all.
Said, Kathianne, you give some numbers about the violence acts. Sure. But it will please to me if I could have the numbers of violence acts in USA. I think they are realy more numerous. At least in France we don't have murders or gang wars.
You speak about destruction of cars and buses and actions against policemen. Of course, USA is very quiet on this subject.
Please, stop to believe that France is near the civil war. The people who are at the origin of the problems are a real minority. I think I am the best person to see if France will fall into a religious war, and I can say to you : NO. IN south of France, there is quite a lot of muslim, in Marseille (less in Aix), but there is not enormous problems...
France Prepares 50,000 Riot Police for Muslim Attacks
athe_french_intifada_by_latuff2_featuredimage.jpgEXCLUSIVE TO PJM By Paul Belien from Brussels Journal
As America prepares for Halloween, France is girding for a wave of attacks from Muslim youthsa reprise of the deadly French riots of last year.
A leaked French intelligence report warns that during the first week of November, a school holiday (Nov. 1 or All Saints Day), Muslim riots could convulse the country.
On Monday, Le Figaro, the leading center-right newspaper in the country, quoted a confidential report written by the Renseignements Généraux (RG), the French equivalent of the FBI. The 17-page RG report, dated 11 October, states that the root causes of last years riots are still in place. The authorities are especially concerned All Saints Day when many urban youths are left to their own and have more time to cause unrest.
Not that France has been a peace since last years riots. In the past few weeks alone, several policemen were ambushed by youths who seemed intent on killing them. In response, the French Interior Ministry asked the police to keep a low profile and not to show themselves in the Muslim suburbs in order to avoid tension.
Since appeasement alone is not a strategy. French authorities are keeping a force of some 50,000 riot police in permanent stand-by. A ministry spokesman said it is important to find the good balance: not overreact to the situation, but at the same time, not underestimate it either.
A local prefect (a provincial governor) added: In case of trouble, we will have to be able to control events for a prolonged period without running out of forces.
Last years intifada lasted three weeks. It petered out when the authorities asked the media to stop devoting attention to the riots.
The situation, however, never returned to normal. Unless one considers (as some French officials seem to do) the current situation as normal. In the first six months of this year there were 50,000 acts of urban violence by Muslims. On average 15 police officers, fire fighters or other public officials are attacked per day and 100 cars are set alight per night.
Gangs of immigrant vandals operate in a paramilitary fashion. A spokesman for the French police officers union, himself a policeman, has that France is in the midst of a civil war.
Interestingly, no public official said the union was exaggerating.
The RG report, cited by Le Figaro, however, says that there is no evidence that the gangs coordinate their attacks across different suburbs.
The latest serious incident was a pitched battle between rioters and policemen in Grande-Borne, a suburb of Paris, on Sunday afternoon after youths had torched a city bus. Shortly after 2 PM immigrant youths stopped the vehicle, ordered the driver and the passengers to get out and set it afire.
In fact, some blame the media have for reporting the bus attack, thereby, adding to the tensions. Blaming the messenger is about all France can do these days.
All of this is now considered to be a normal incident in contemporary France. It is the abnormal violence, perhaps coming on November 1 that has the French really worried.
Paul Belien is the editor of the Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Youths torch buses around Paris
By CECILE BRISSON, Associated Press Writer 52 minutes ago
Youths forced passengers off three buses and set them on fire overnight in suburban Paris, raising tensions Thursday ahead of the first anniversary of the riots that engulfed France's rundown, heavily immigrant neighborhoods.
No injuries were reported, but worried bus drivers refused to enter some suburbs after dark, and the prime minister urged a swift, stern response.
The riots in October 2005 raged through housing projects in suburbs nationwide, springing in part from anger over entrenched discrimination against immigrants and their French-born children, many of them Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Despite an influx of funds and promises, disenchantment still thrives in those communities.
About 10 attackers five of them with handguns stormed a bus in Montreuil east of Paris early Thursday and forced the passengers off, the RATP transport authority said. They then drove off and set the bus on fire.
Late Wednesday, three attackers forced passengers off another bus in Athis-Mons, south of Paris, and tossed a Molotov cocktail inside, police officials said. The driver managed to put out the fire. Elsewhere, between six and 10 youths herded passengers off a bus in the western suburb of Nanterre late Wednesday and set it alight.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the events "should lead to an immediate response."
"We cannot accept the unacceptable," he told reporters in the northern suburb of Cergy-Pontoise. "There will be arrests. ... That is our responsibility."
Villepin also said efforts should be directed to "revitalize" troubled neighborhoods, and repeated the government's insistence that authorities rid France of "lawless zones" where youth gangs operate.
The overnight attacks and recent ambushes on police have raised concern about the changing character of suburban violence, which is seemingly more premeditated than last year's spontaneous outcry and no longer restricted to the housing projects. The use of handguns was unusual last year's rioters were armed primarily with crowbars, stones, sticks or gasoline bombs.
Regional authorities said the Nanterre bus line, which passes near Paris' financial district, had not been considered at a high risk of attack. Francois Saglier, director of bus service at the RATP, said the attacks happened "without prior warning and not necessarily in neighborhoods considered difficult."
The RATP was to meet later Thursday with unions to determine which routes would be changed or limited in response to the unrest. Unions demanded that the RATP allow drivers to exercise their right to stop work in case of imminent danger.
"We will take measures that become necessary to avoid sensitive neighborhoods," Saglier told reporters. The drivers feel "worry but at the same time a great sense of responsibility," he said.
The transit authority in the Essonne region south of Paris on Wednesday suspended nighttime bus service for security reasons following "multiple incidents," including a tear gas bomb.
France's inability to better integrate minorities and recent violence against police are becoming major political issues as the campaign heats up for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who is considering whether to run for president, said that attacks demonstrate "a desire to kill."
"Some individuals are looking for provocations, and sometimes go further," she said on i-Tele television. She acknowledged people facing unemployment and living in overcrowded housing projects "have trouble finding their place" in society.
The three weeks of riots were sparked by the deaths on Oct. 27, 2005, of two young boys of African descent who were electrocuted in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, while hiding from police.
France sends riot police to Marseille
By MICHEL ALLIONE, Associated Press WriterSun Oct 29, 3:33 PM ET
France's interior minister sent riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, gravely burning a young woman. Now who were those 'teenagers'?
French police braced for violence this weekend, the anniversary of last year's riots in poor neighborhoods where immigrants from former French colonies in Africa live with their French-born children on the fringes of society.
On Saturday, 46 people were taken into custody, most of them in the communities around Paris, and two police officers were slightly injured. The most serious violence was the brutal bus attack in Marseille.
A group of young people burst onto the bus and tossed in a bottle of flammable liquid before fleeing, police said, citing witnesses' accounts. The resulting fire injured a 26-year-old woman, who suffered second- and third-degree burns on her arms, legs and face and was in a medically induced coma on Sunday.
President Jacques Chirac telephoned the woman's family, ensuring them that France would "do everything to find the assailants and punish them with the greatest severity," his office said.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a meeting for Monday on public transport safety, while Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's office said he was sending two extra companies of riot police to Marseille. Bus drivers in Marseille refused to return to work.
Though youths have burned other buses during flare-up of violence, passengers have generally escaped before the vehicles went up in flames. Another bus was burned Saturday in Trappes, outside Paris, but its passengers fled unharmed, police said.
The three weeks of rioting last year were fueled by anger at France's failure to offer equal chances to many minorities, including France's 5 million-strong Muslim population.
The rioting was sparked by the deaths of two teenagers who were electrocuted in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois on Oct. 27, 2005, where they were hiding after what they thought was a police chase.
For the anniversary of the teens' deaths, national police said about 4,000 extra police and riot officers were deployed across the country to cope with a possible resurgence of violence. Some 7,000 police are at the ready on an average night in France.
Aside from the bus attack in Marseille, the Interior Ministry said that both Friday and Saturday night were "relatively calm." So what is 'less than calm?'Youths set fire to about 200 vehicles Saturday, police said. But even on ordinary nights, the number of cars burned often reaches 100. right, this sounds normal? What color is the sky in this universe?
France's trouble integrating minorities and the unrest in poor neighborhoods have become political priorities in the campaign for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections. So are the Eastern Europeans causing problems? US expats? UK?
The government passed an equal opportunities law this spring and has poured in funds to its "sensitive" areas, but disenchantment continues.
), read the special issue of THE ECONOMIST about France.
Monday, October 30, 2006
MEETING HELD
French youthstheyre so youthful!have graduated from burning cars to burning buses to burning people:
The French government is holding an emergency meeting on transport security after youths set a bus ablaze on Saturday, critically injuring a woman.
The attack in the southern city of Marseille left 26-year-old Mama Galledou from Senegal with burns to nearly 70% of her body ...
A group of teenagers reportedly forced open the doors of the vehicle and threw an inflammable liquid inside before fleeing.
About 200 vehicles were set alight in incidents around the country on Saturday, and nearly 50 people were arrested.
CNN reports that in the first six months of 2006, some 21,000 cars were burned out and 2,882 attacks on police, fire and ambulance services were recorded. This follows last years Citroen bake-off, which apparently resulted in just one jail term among minors charged:
Only one minor in Seine-Saint-Denis was imprisoned out of 85 prosecuted.
Posted by Tim B. on 10/30/2006 at 02:17 PM
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