[Onthebarricades] FRANCE: Unrest rocks suburbs

[Andy]

To repeat what I've said before...  France is at a turning point.  Social resistance and insurrection need to be sustained, or else Sarkozy is going to drive France into the same neo-totalitarian cesspit as Britain, America and Australia.  Sarkozy is an authoritarian/neoliberal extremist and must be stopped.  For his project to succeed, he needs to crush the massive resistance of the urban poor, workers, students and other groups involved in social mobilisations.  It would require something like the miners' strike to turn France from the quasi-populist liberal democracy it started out as into a full-fledged authoritarian regime like those in strongly neoliberal societies.  Every revolt must be viewed with hope - and every wave of repression, every threatened measure with trepidation.  France is currently at the forefront of the struggle for, and against, neoliberalism globally.

Summary:

*  Mass uprising by youths in Paris suburbs after suspicious death linked to police
*  Riot police in pitched battles with thousands of local youths
*  "Guerrilla war" analogy mooted
*  Clashes continue for two nights but abate on third; also spread to Toulouse
*  Unrest briefer, but more intense than 2005 insurrection; at least 200 clashes between youths and police last year
*  Police routed in several locations
*  Several police stations torched
*  Airguns fired at police during unrest
*  "It's a way of making people understand we've had enough" 
*  Police try to cordon off affected areas
*  Serious analysts stress racism, poverty; Sarkozy in denial, spouts hatred (but is careful to wait for it to die down first)
*  Menace of CCTV, tasers could be deployed to suppress unrest
*  Police attempt show-trials of accused youths
*  Local bigots make excuses for police as "violence" taboo kicks in
*  Strikes, unrest hit Sarkozy's popularity

Riots break out in Paris suburbs after police crash kills youth
By Alex Lantier, France
27 November 2007
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/fran-n27.shtml

Riots have shaken the north Paris suburbs for two consecutive nights
after the deaths of two youths, Moushin and Larimi, in Villiers-le-Bel
around 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 25. The youths were riding on a
motorbike that was hit by a police car and were left for dead by police.

The basic details of the collision are not in dispute. According to
the daily Le Monde, "the motorbike skidded for over twenty meters,"
while "the police car's front was smashed and the bumpers torn off;
the windshield caved in deeply." The policemen promptly fled the scene
on foot.

Marie-Thérère Givry, the Pontoise district prosecutor, said that the
policemen left the area and did not begin investigations until that
night because of "the danger that their presence in that area would
have posed." She did not explain her comment further, but it is clear
that they feared being caught by enraged inhabitants.

Le Monde quoted Younès B., an inhabitant of Villiers-le-Bel: "A second
police team came to pick up their colleagues. But they left the two
kids without doing anything."

Givry opened an investigation for "involuntary homicide and
non-assistance of persons in danger" with the Inspection Générale de
la Police Nationale (IGPN), the national agency charged with
investigating police misconduct.

Belgium's RTL television interviewed one inhabitant who said: "A lady
[...] came down to help them, she's a nurse. She gave them first aid.
When the neighborhood kids arrived, she said, 'It's over, they're
dead.' She was all alone, the cops were gone."

Firemen eventually arrived to try to help the victims. Omar Sehhouli,
the brother of one of the deceased, told RTL: "I spoke to a fireman, I
won't tell you the name as he asked me not to quote him. He said,
'Frankly, just between the two of us, the policemen are cowards.'"

There are substantial suspicions that the incident was deliberate.
According to reporters for the daily Libération, "Media use of the
term 'involuntary homicide' was particularly infuriating [to residents
of the area], many of whom are convinced that the collision was
deliberately provoked by the police squad."

Libération added: "There was apparently tension between one of the
victims and police. Larami's father [...] affirmed today to other
inhabitants that a policeman had threatened his son last week. His
described a verbal exchange with a policeman who told his son that
'You'll have to deal with us.'"

Rioting spread that evening and developed into a pitched battle
between police and local inhabitants. Riot police around the local
fire station shot flash-balls and tear gas at demonstrators, who threw
stones and glass bottles. They then marched on the local commuter
train station, burning the police stations of Villiers-le-Bel and
Arnouville-lès-Gonesse and destroying their computers.

Le Monde commented: "Despite reinforcements from all over the Paris
area, police forces-equipped with bulletproof vests, flash-balls, and
tear grenades-had the greatest difficulty in restoring order. They
tried to block the movements of 'highly mobile' groups, according to a
police official on the scene, but without success. [...] Numerous
inhabitants insulted policemen as they go by-and the police did not
hesitate to reply in the same manner."

According to figures given by Givry's office, 40 policemen were
injured, including one police commissioner with serious skull
injuries. No figures were given in French corporate media on the
number or seriousness of casualties among the demonstrators.

The next day, hundreds of policemen were brought into the region.

The IGPN released an interim report on Monday that provocatively
attempted to whitewash the conduct of the police. It cleared the
policemen of all charges and confirmed "police accounts" that the
incident was a "traffic accident" due to the youth traveling "at a
very lively speed," whereas the police car was moving "normally,
without speeding or sirens."

On the question of whether police failed to appropriately help the
victims of the accident-to which both witnesses and officials had
until then unanimously testified-the report brazenly asserted that it
was "a harder point in the case, which calls for more investigations."
It added that police committed "no serious error."

Authorities quickly tried to rally around the report. Givry announced:
"I will not let anyone say that the police services did not assist the
youth." From China, where he is currently on a state visit, French
President Sarkozy demanded that "everyone calm down and that the
justice system be allowed to determine the degree of responsibility on
both sides."

Villiers-le-Bel inhabitants marched Monday afternoon. Those at the
front of the march carried pictures of Moushin and Larimi bitterly
labeled, "Rest in peace. Deceased on November 25, 2007. Died for no
reason."

Monday night, further rioting broke out in six neighboring suburbs:
Villiers-le-Bel, Cergy, Goussainville, Sarcelles, Garges-lès-Gonesse,
and Ermont. Police sources said 36 cars burned, in addition to
trashcans, a primary (maternelle) school, and a library. Thirty
policemen were listed as injured, including two serious injuries.
Again, there were no figures on non-police injuries.

Authorities fear that, should these demonstrations continue and get
out of control of police forces, there could be a replay of the
November 2005 riots touched off by the electrocution of two youths
while fleeing police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. They are
therefore publicly announcing preparations for a massive confrontation.

A police official told Le Monde, "It's been a long time since there
have been so many police forces brought together. Even in 2005 we
hadn't seen something like this. The town is entirely sectioned off."

The use of language reminiscent of French colonialism's struggle
against the masses of Algiers in the 1950s is no accident. The policy
of forming large-scale police authorities capable of rapidly
mobilizing large numbers of cops for police raids in poor
neighborhoods-a policy championed by Sarkozy as Interior Minister in
2003-has helped transform the relations between inhabitants and police
into a constant, low-level war that erupts every time the police kill
someone, unintentionally or otherwise.

Inhabitants' suspicions that the deaths were intentional are entirely
justified. This act of police violence comes in a definite political
context-the calling off by the trade union bureaucracy of the major
transport strikes against Sarkozy's government over pension cuts.

Every time a major mass struggle has been called off in recent
years-e.g. in 2003 against then-Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's
pension cuts and in 2006 against Dominique de Villepin's First Job
Contract reforms-the government has sought to appeal to racist or
religious prejudices against Muslims and immigrants, who make up a
large portion of the population in poorer suburbs. In 2003, Raffarin
prepared a bill that banned Islamic headscarves in French public
buildings. In 2006, the Villepin government passed a tough
anti-immigrant bill shortly after the end of the First Job Contract
demonstrations.

Whether or not this particular killing happened as authorities were
encouraging police officials to take a harder line on immigrant
suburban youth is, of course, hard to determine. However, there are
undeniable signs that another campaign appealing to anti-immigrant
prejudices is being prepared.

Several media outlets, including Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur,
have recently carried articles paraphrasing apparently vulgar
anti-Muslim rants by Sarkozy in diplomatic negotiations with other
European heads of state.

Libération journalist Jean Quatremer wrote on November 19 that Nicolas
Sarkozy "gave a real anti-Muslim diatribe before his guests. According
to my sources, the head of state [i.e. Sarkozy] launched into a
confused, twenty-minute speech [...] against the overly large number
of Muslims present in Europe." He mentioned that Sarkozy repeatedly
spoke of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and Europe.

Le Nouvel Observateur, in its November 26 article on the subject, also
posted a video of Sarkozy criticizing Islamic practices, such as the
slaughter of sheep during the festival of Eid. Sarkozy roughly
comments: "One does not slaughter a sheep in one's bathtub."

In the current political context, no confidence can be placed in the
investigations carried out by the police. Sarkozy's call for everyone
to "calm down" in the face of a police whitewash reeks of the most
repellent cynicism. An independent investigation must be convened to
establish the legal responsibility of the policemen and the political
responsibility of the leading politicians.

-------------------------------------------------

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/world/europe/28riot.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Police and Protesters Clash Near Paris 

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By KATRIN BENNHOLD
Published: November 28, 2007
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France, Nov. 27 - Dodging rocks and projectiles, the police lined the streets of this tense suburb Tuesday where angry youths have vowed to seek revenge for the deaths of two teenagers who died in a weekend collision with a police car. 

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Charles Platiau/Reuters
The Louis Jouvet library was torched. More Photos » 

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Violence in a Paris Suburb 
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Charles Platiau/Reuters
Municipality workers stood near a burnt police car two days after the death of two youths in a motorbike accident with a police car in a suburb of Paris. More Photos > 

 
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Police union officials warned that the violence was escalating into urban guerrilla warfare, with shotguns aimed at officers - a rare sight in the last major outbreak of suburban unrest, in 2005. 

More than 80 have been injured so far - four of them as a result of gunfire - and the rage was still simmering Tuesday afternoon. Inside the city hall of Villiers-le-Bel, a group of visiting mayors appealed for calm while police officers dodged rocks outside. 

"We are sitting targets," said Sophie Bar, a local police officer who stood guard outside. "They were throwing rocks at us and it was impossible to see where they came from. They just came raining over the roof." 

The violence was set off by the deaths of two teenagers on a motorbike who were killed in a crash with a police car Sunday night. The scene, with angry youths targeting the police mostly with firebombs, rocks and other projectiles, was reminiscent of three weeks of rioting in 2005. 

But senior police officials warned that the violence was more intense this time. 

"Things have changed since 2005," said Joachim Masanet, secretary general of the police wing of the UNSA trade union. "We have crossed a red line. When these kids aim their guns at police officers, they want to kill them. They are no longer afraid to shoot a policeman. We are only on the second day since the accident, and already they are shooting guns at the police." 

Some young men stood by the charred timbers of the town's police station, laughing and surveying the damage. 

Cem, 18, of Turkish origin, declined to give his name because he feared police reprisals. But he and his friend Karim, of Algerian descent, said they both had participated in rioting over the past two days. 

"That's just the beginning," Cem said. "This is a war. There is no mercy. We want two cops dead."

Karim added: "The police brought this on themselves. They will regret it." 

Six of the officers hurt in the clashes Monday were in serious condition, according to Francis Debuire, a police union official. Four were wounded by gunfire, including one who lost an eye and another who suffered a shattered shoulder. 

The biggest risk, the police say, is that the violence will spread. In 2005, unrest cascaded through more than 300 towns, leaving 10,000 cars burned and 4,700 people arrested.

As night fell in Villiers-le-Bel, the anxiety was evident. Strangers warned people to hide their cellphones because youths were snatching them on the street. People hurried to their homes, while some gathered in knots on street corners. Police helicopters circling public housing developments spotted stockpiles of rocks stacked along the roofs. 

Naim Masoud, 39, a teaching assistant in Villiers-le-Bel, said that, in her school, even 8-year-old children talked about racism and discrimination by the police. 

"It will take a lot more than riot police to cure this neighborhood," she said. "These children feel like foreigners. It is inexcusable what they are doing, but the seeds are deep."

Some of the fiercest clashes Monday took place near a bakery where one of the dead, a 16-year-old known only as Larami because his identity has not been made public, was an apprentice. 

Habib Friaa, the owner of the bakery, said Larami had been highly regarded. He was stunned, he added, to learn Monday about his death. 

"It's quite something to say goodbye to somebody on Saturday and learn two days later that he died. We're like a family here because we're a small business," Mr. Friaa said, noting that Larami "was not a delinquent. He was somebody who was learning our profession and he was serious." 

Ariane Bernard contributed reporting from Villiers-le-Bel.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jeFc8AF_c6NJD6v25AZYeidCgg0AD8T7IDV80

French Leader: Thug Culture Caused Riots
By JENNY BARCHFIELD - 1 day ago 

PARIS (AP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy rejected the notion Thursday that a recent bout of rioting was part of a wider social crisis, blaming instead a "thugocracy" in France's housing projects.

The conservative leader vowed to give law enforcement improved technology to fight urban disturbances like ones that shook the troubled suburbs north of Paris earlier this week.

Vast deployments of riot police succeeded in restoring calm to the area following two nights of violent clashes between rampaging local youth and police officers.

The unrest has drawn comparisons to riots that raged through poor suburbs nationwide for three weeks in 2005, and it shows that anger still simmers in poor housing projects where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live, often isolated from mainstream society.

Sarkozy made it clear he would not throw money at the problem, saying he favored harsher penalties for the troublemakers.

"The response to the rioters is not more money at the taxpayers' expense, but the arrest of rioters," Sarkozy told a meeting of some 2,000 police officers. He insisted the unrest had "nothing to do with a social crisis. That has everything to do with the thugocracy."

He said France would invest in video surveillance equipment and other technologies aimed at putting down urban violence.

The riots broke out following the deaths Sunday of two teenage boys in a motorbike crash with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel. Some residents refused to believe the deaths were accidental, blaming the police.

On Thursday, some 300 mourners marched through Villiers-le-Bel carrying a banner at the front of the funeral procession that demanded "justice and truth" for the dead teens, Mohsin Sehhouli, 16, and Lakamy Samoura, 15.

Samoura will be buried in Senegal, the country his parents immigrated from in 1966, said Jean Chevais, an attorney for the family.

At the height of the violence Monday night, rioters fired shotguns at officers, injuring at least 10 and signaling a deterioration in long-strained relations between police and the country's youth. Guns were rarely used during the 2005 riots.

In his speech Thursday, Sarkozy vowed zero tolerance for the use of firearms against officers.

"If it is a new attitude, it won't last long," he said, adding that police were worthy of praise because they legitimately could have fired back.

Successive governments have struggled with the question of how to integrate minority youths from poor neighborhoods. Heavy state investment has done little to improve housing and create jobs in the depressed projects that ring Paris.

The government's newest plan - an "equal opportunities" bill to improve the prospects of those in poor suburbs - will be unveiled Jan. 22.

Associated Press writer Laurent Pirot in Paris contributed to this report.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22847024-1702,00.html

Sarkozy condemns riot 'yobocracy'
By Emma Charlton in Paris

November 30, 2007 09:11am

Article from: Agence France-Presse
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FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to track down the "yobs and traffickers" he accused of fomenting unrest in the high-immigration suburbs of Paris.

In a prime-time television interview, Mr Sarkozy promised his government would take a tough line towards those behind a flare-up of violence that left more than 120 police wounded, some by gunfire. 

"These people are yobs, ready to do anything. We will find them one by one," said Mr Sarkozy, who seized hold of the suburb crisis upon his return from a state visit to China. 

Two nights of arson attacks and clashes around Villiers le Bel, north of the capital, were triggered by the death of two teenage boys in a motorbike collision with a police car on Sunday. 

"We came within inches of a catastrophe," warned Mr Sarkozy, who earlier visited several officers wounded by hunting rifle buckshot and bullets, including one who lost an eye. 

Hundreds of riot police were on duty for a fourth night in Villiers and nearby towns, where a mass security presence has kept an uneasy calm for the past two nights. 

Mr Sarkozy charged earlier that the violence - France's worst unrest since nationwide riots in November 2005 - was caused by a hard core of delinquents rather than social deprivation. 

"What happened in Villiers le Bel has nothing to do with a social crisis and everything to do with yobocracy," he told a meeting of police officers. 

"Other unemployed people do not open fire on the police," he reaffirmed.

"This has nothing to do with an accident. This has nothing to do with social problems. I will not respond to this with more money.

"When you try to explain the inexplicable, you end up finding excuses for the inexcusable."

His words were echoed by Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, herself a social activist from the "banlieues", who told Le Parisien newspaper that "what happened is not a social crisis. This is anarchic urban violence carried out by a minority, who tarnish the majority."

Tough on delinquents

Mr Sarkozy said an action plan for the poor suburbs to be announced in January would focus on encouraging social mobility "for those who want to get out", while promising tough treatment for delinquents. 

Government policy would be "more generous to those who want training and a job, a family and a home, and more severe to those whose only idea is to poison the lives of others," he said. 

The initial findings of an investigation into Sunday's accident confirmed the police version according to which the police vehicle was driving at normal speed when it was crashed into by the two teenagers, neither of whom was wearing a helmet, Le Figaro newspaper reported. 

Some local people appear to believe that the crash was deliberately caused by the police, who they say left the scene without treating the victims. 

Nine-day transport strike

The suburb violence came hard on the heels of a paralysing nine-day transport strike against Mr Sarkozy's pension reform plans, the most serious challenge to his presidency since his election in May. 

A poll taken at the height of the strike showed Mr Sarkozy's confidence ratings tumbling below 50 percent for the first time, with respondents complaining of stagnating wages and rising prices and stubbornly high unemployment, at 8.1 percent. 

Mr Sarkozy pledged to "put some fuel" back into the economy, but with sluggish growth and French public finances stretched to capacity, he warned the solution could not come from state "hand-outs". 

"The French people are not waiting for me to hand out gifts like Father Christmas when they know there is no money in the coffers," he said. 

Mr Sarkozy insisted the only way to boost spending power was to allow people to "work more to earn more" - his key campaign slogan - promising to let firms circumvent the 35-work week under agreement with workers and unions. 

Forty-nine percent of respondents told the TNS-Sofres poll they doubted Mr Sarkozy's ability to wrench France out of the economic doldrums. 

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g0SrWTaNqfYGtJGPUCd27QG-0ZMAD8T86MPG0

Riots Point to Racially Divided France
By JENNY BARCHFIELD and JOHN LEICESTER - 11 hours ago 

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (AP) - French officials point to a host of causes - poverty, unemployment, the influence of criminal gangs - for riots that erupted this week.

But there's one taboo issue that officially colorblind France has been unable to confront: race.

The violence, like riots that spread nationwide for three weeks in 2005, exposed how parts of France have divided along color lines, with blacks and Arabs trapped in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods - like Villiers-le-Bel, in the northern suburbs of Paris, where gangs attacked police and burned cars and buildings this week.

"Among the rioters, the very large majority come from immigrant backgrounds," said Douhane Mohamed, a police commander. "Why? We mustn't kid ourselves: there is a direct link between urban violence and ghettos, and the majority of people with immigrant roots live in ghettos."

France does not like to see its recurrent, and some say worsening, bouts of urban violence through the prism of race or color. Rioters are often described simply as "youths," while poor projects with large concentrations of immigrants are "sensitive urban zones."

In the name of equality, France has so idealized the melting pot that it has made its minorities invisible - on paper at least. The country does not compile statistics on the foreign-born or their French-born children. France, a nation of 60 million people, has the largest Muslim community in western Europe but does not know how many Muslims live here. The number is estimated at about 5 million - though some experts disagree.

Critics argue that being officially colorblind has limited France's ability to recognize and treat the difficulties its minorities face - sometimes because of their color. Immigrants and their French-born children often complain that it is harder for them than whites to get work, job interviews, housing, even entrance to nightclubs.

President Nicolas Sarkozy once toyed with the idea of affirmative action but then dropped it before he won the presidency in May. He won praise for appointing three women to his Cabinet who have roots in north and sub-Saharan Africa. But his toughness on immigration and crime has angered many minority youths.

Sarkozy took a hard line against this week's rioters, dismissing the notion that they were symptomatic of a wider social crisis and instead labeling them a "thugocracy."

The rioters are a tiny minority but sullen anger is palpable in Villiers-le-Bel. Black youths complain that police stop and search them because of their color. They speak of exclusion, of not getting a fair shake, of being treated like foreigners in their own country.

Few residents condone the violence and many condemn it - but no one seems surprised that it broke out.

"Everyone is equal. That is what is written. But behind that is something else," said Hassan Ben M'Barek, spokesman for Suburbs Respect, a group that lobbies for those who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In some such areas of the Paris region, "there are no white French people left in the streets. You can drive around for two or three hours and all you will see are North Africans and blacks. And these are neighborhoods with enormous problems," he added. "Those who have the means to leave the projects are white, and they leave. There's no more ethnic diversity."

It was impossible not to see the violence in Villiers-le-Bel in black and white terms.

The hundreds of beefy riot police officers drafted in, some from as far away as France's eastern border with Germany, were almost exclusively white. The neighborhoods they patrolled were largely black and Arab.

The trigger for the rioting was the deaths last Sunday of two teens whose motorcycle crashed with a police car. Lakamy Samoura, 15 and Mohsin Sehhouli, 16, weren't wearing helmets and their bike was not authorized for public roads.

Police insisted the crash was accidental, but kids in the neighborhood didn't believe it. The deaths became an excuse for two nights of rioting in which more than 100 police officers were injured, some by shotgun rounds.

Tellingly, neither of the teens will be buried in France, although both were French. Mohsin's parents are taking his body to Morocco; Lakamy will be buried in Senegal, from where his parents emigrated in 1966.

Having a foot in France and another in Africa is something that Maka Sali, a black 17-year-old in Villiers, identifies with. She said she doesn't like taking trips into Paris - about 20 minutes away on the train - because she doesn't like the way some whites there look at her.

"I feel like a foreigner," she said. She also said it was "just terrible" that it took the deaths of two teens to thrust the issue of France's poor neighborhoods back to the forefront of the national agenda.

The riots of 2005 also started when two teens were killed - electrocuted while hiding in a power substation from police.

Some argue that the recurring violence must make France rethink its taboos.

Mohamed, the police officer born in France of Algerian parents, said France should carefully allow research into the proportion of crimes and urban violence carried out by minorities, so solutions can be found.

M'Barek said France needs more minorities in visible positions of responsibility and that affirmative action may be a way to get them there.

Since the violence of 2005, France has earmarked billions of dollars for programs to improve housing and create jobs in tough neighborhoods. The government says that its newest "equal opportunities" program will be unveiled Jan. 22.

But it was hard to see among the burned out cars and blackened moods in Villiers that much has changed.

"The only thing they (the government) have done is build that police station," said Frank Dosso, a black 16-year-old, referring to a $7 million police station under construction in Villiers. "But that's not going to last long."

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentaryother.asp?file=novembercommentary722007.xml

Disaffection, poverty underlie French riots (By Geraldine Baum)

They burned the library during a riot in Villiers-Le-Bel, a gritty suburb outside of Paris. The blackened shelves and books were thrown around like garbage the next morning, and singed desks were piled on top of each other like old firewood. As they examined the wreckage - the senator, the sports coach and the teenagers with sticks and pipes still skulking around in the light of day - all had similar explanations as to why. Why the arson up and down the commercial streets? Why the attack on a pre school and the area's only train station? The death of two teenagers after their motorbike collided on Sunday with a police car had ignited a melee. But why two nights of unparalleled violence against police?

"It's a way of making people understand we've had enough," says Charlie Koissi, the 31-year-old coach who seems to know every kid who passes by and gives each one a high-five. "When you touch one of our brothers, no matter what (his) origin, it concerns us." Raymonde Le Texier, the senator who represents the area in the French Parliament and has lived here 40 years, describes pent-up rage by black and Muslim children of immigrants who feel lost and abandoned in the projects. "People feel forgotten by those in power," says Le Texier, a member of the Socialist Party. "It's the truth - they have been forgotten."

As for the kids, they speak without words. They throw rocks at outsiders and stare angrily at officials including Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who breezes quickly past the burned-out library and later calls the rioters "criminals". Journalists with their relentless questions are circling around the kids, who half want to be heard and half want to fight them. No, they aren't talking today, and they shut down their "brothers" who try to speak.

By midnight there was still evidence of tension, but mostly the area had calmed down. Unrest flared up briefly in the southern town of Toulouse where 10 cars and another library were torched by roving posses of disaffected youth. Theirs is a world apart with its own codes and subculture. When France was paralysed most of this month by widespread strikes, the young in these poor neighbourhoods remained calm, quietly enduring the chaos like everybody else. But then two of their own, identified as Moushin, 15, and Larimi, 16, lay dead on the street. Immediately everybody blamed the cops. Cars were set on fire, and blurry photographs of the teenagers with the words "We Love You" written on them were taped on storefronts and street signs. This time around the violence came faster and more furiously than in 2005.

During 200 nights of clashes between ghetto youth and riot police that year, there was only one death and sporadic injuries. But after only two nights of confrontations this week, 80 police were hospitalised, including six who were seriously injured when rioters pummeled them with stones, gas bombs and firecrackers. At least two dozen officers were hit by pellets fired from long guns.

Not much has changed since 2005 in the lives of the young rabble-rousers. Despite the money the government has poured into these areas to rehabilitate them, the mood is the same. In this town of 27,000 young and older men still roam the streets with nothing to do most weekdays. The jobless rate remains steady at 40 per cent. The French government has been trying to bring renewal to these tumble-down areas, spending almost $9bn a year on programmes and construction projects. A recent watchdog report showed, however, that much of the money had been wasted through inefficiency and repetitive services.

There is a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, promising more renewal, but he is also the loathed former interior minister of the previous regime who fanned the violence in 2005 by referring to marauding youth as "scum".

Sarkozy has made it clear that he'll side with law enforcement and the people who have lost their cars and their businesses to the unrest. Le Texier, the senator, scoffs at Sarkozy's urban affairs minister, Fadela Amara. Amara has been on a mission since the summer to hear from the residents of the ghetto about what they think must be done and is expected to deliver a plan of action by early next year. Le Texier says people who know the problems are disgusted by Amara's search for the best strategies: "We've been telling the government for 10 years what needs to be done here."

The most difficult hurdles, she and others agree, are the ones money cannot easily fix. They are endemic to the culture of France's 5 million immigrants, particularly many of the second-generation who are born in France but don't feel French. And so during a night of rage they target a police station, a local library: "It's a symbol," says Le Texier, "of the Republic, of the city, of the state."


http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article3201860.ece

Paris suburbs on brink as riots leave 82 police injured

 
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 

By John Lichfield

Massive police reinforcements, led by the Prime Minister in person, attempted to stem a violent revolt, bordering on guerrilla warfare, on the northern fringes of greater Paris. 



Cars and shops were set alight late last night but there was nothing like the massed attacks on police seen on Monday evening when 82 officers were injured, some by pellets from shot-guns and light hunting rifles. 


Appeals for calm, and an influx of hundreds of police, led by the Prime Minister François Fillon and Interior Minister Michèle Alliot- Marie, appeared to have imposed an uneasy calm in the early part of the evening in the town of Villiers-le-Bel, 12 miles north of Paris. The town's library and two schools were burned to the ground on Monday night in running battles between police and a mob of 150 to 200 youths. 


Despite the apparent lull, fears remained high that the riots might erupt once again and spread to other poor and troubled suburbs of French cities, just as they did in November 2005. There were car burnings in several cities last night and an attempted arson attack on a library in a poor district of Toulouse, in south-west France. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was returning from a visit to China last night, will hold an emergency security meeting today. 


The violence in Villiers-le-Bel, previously a leafy island of relative calm in the far northern suburbs of the capital, was sparked by the death of two teenage boys after an accident between their miniature scrambling bike and a police car. 


A broadly similar incident, in another northern Paris suburb, ignited the riots two years ago, which spread to the poor districts of almost every town and city in France. 


Why should an accident produce such an explosion of violence? Why should boys, aged 14 to 17, some as young as 10, burn a library? What depths of hatred and anger would persuade them to fire hunting rifles and shot-guns at the police? 


Two years after the suburban riots of 2005, France finds itself confronted with all of the same questions. Or, perhaps, even harder questions. 


The evidence of the second night's rioting - more than 80 policemen injured by shotgun and airgun pellets, including four seriously - suggests that the level of urban violence has ratcheted up alarmingly. Few guns were used during the three weeks of nationwide riots in 2005. 


On Monday night, the youths, mostly teenagers, but with some older leaders in their 20s, attacked the police head on. In 2005, there were thousands of incidents of arson but few direct confrontations. 


Despite evidence to the contrary, the young people from the tower blocks of the ZAC - "concerted redevelopment zone" - on the edge of Villiers-le-Bel are convinced that Larami, 16, and Mouhsin, 15, were deliberately rammed by a patrolling police car. 


According to the authorities, all the evidence from independent eye-witnesses points to a simple road accident. The two boys - riding without helmets on an off-road, miniature, scrambling bike - roared out of a side-street in front of the patrol car. The policemen tried to help them and called for medical help before retreating from a menacing mob, police say. 


Part of the problem is that the police - and the then interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy - made similar dismissive comments after two teenage boys died in an electricity sub-station at Clichy-sous-Bois while fleeing police in late October 2005. It later emerged that the boys, innocent of any crime, had been pursued by police and the officers had abandoned them in the sub-station, knowing that they were in danger. 


A much larger part of the problem is that a state of warfare now exists between the police and young people in the poor, multi-racial suburbs. For them it is inconceivable that a fatal accident involving a police-car could have been an "accident". Amina, 28, was visiting the impromptu shrine to the boys where they died. "Yes, of course it was probably an accident but try telling that to the other boys here," she said. "This is not an especially violent place. When the police come here, it is only to make trouble, to harass and insult the boys and young men. Even I have to ask myself: what were the police doing here on Sunday?" 


Even politicians from his own centre-right party are pointing to a decision taken by M. Sarkozy as interior minister in 2002 as the source of much of the increased anger in the banlieues. M. Sarkozy abolished the local police units in the suburbs and replaced them with flying squads, including units of the CRS riot police. Hugues Portelli, centre-right mayor of Ermont, close to Villiers le Bel, said yesterday: "We need to have the local police back... in my town we know very well that there is no point in calling in some CRS units. They only provoke a fight." 

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10204344

On the streets, again
Nov 28th 2007 | PARIS
>From Economist.com

France's social problems run deep

AFP
AFTER nights of rioting in Villiers-le-Bel, a rough banlieue north of Paris, and clashes in Toulouse, President Nicolas Sarkozy was due to hold an emergency security meeting in the French capital on Wednesday November 28th. He was expected to step up further the security presence in the run-down suburb, as well as in those nearby, in an effort to stop the trouble spreading. Police reinforcements helped to bring about a calmer third night on Tuesday. Mr Sarkozy, who was interior minister during the three weeks of rioting and car-burning across French banlieues in 2005, is this time determined to prevent a repeat by clamping down on the violence early.

Freshly back from his trip to China, Mr Sarkozy set the tone for the hard-line position he intends to adopt towards the rioters. After visiting in hospital a local police chief badly wounded in the first night of violence, he vowed on Wednesday that anybody who had fired on policemen would end up in the criminal court: "It is," he said, "attempted murder". Unlike in 2005, when almost no firearms were used by either the rioters or the police, and the violence was primarily arson and rock-throwing, a number of hunting shotguns were used to fire at the police this time.

 
As in 2005, this week's rioting was triggered by the deaths of two youths in a clash with the police. This time, the two teenagers, riding a mini-motorbike without wearing crash helmets, were killed in a collision with a police car. How this happened is unclear, and an inquiry has been opened. By nightfall, rioters were on the rampage. Over two nights of violence, they torched scores of cars and rubbish bins, a police station, a primary school, a library, local shops, a McDonald's fast-food restaurant and municipal buildings. Some 130 policemen were wounded, several of them seriously.

Local (mainly Socialist) mayors had been warning for a while that tension remained high in the country's banlieues, two years on. It is not that these grim neighbourhoods have been neglected altogether. There has been a heavy injection of public cash, primarily into the renovation of the housing estates that ring the big cities. The centre-right Mr Sarkozy appointed a left-wing Muslim woman, Fadela Amara, to draw up a "Marshall Plan" for the banlieues, which is due in January. By including her, as well as other members of ethnic minorities, in his government, he also sent a message of inclusion to the heavily Muslim and ethnic population of the banlieues.

The problem, rather, is that two central issues remain unresolved: the failure of the French economy to create enough jobs, and the tense relationship between the police and local youths. The unemployment rate in the banlieues remains more than twice as high as the national average (which is 8.1%) and on some housing estates is 40%. Mr Sarkozy wants to loosen the labour market to encourage job creation, but negotiations over how to do this are still in progress. It will anyway take time for new policies to take effect.

As for policing, France is hamstrung by a sterile debate that pits the left against the right over police methods. The left insists that things have deteriorated ever since neighbourhood policing was dismantled under the previous centre-right government, and accuses the right of inflaming tension with heavy-handed techniques. In reply, Mr Sarkozy insists that those methods were too lax, treated policemen like social workers not law-enforcement officers, and prefers a strong hand to clamp down on criminality. 

This wave of violence comes at a testing time for Mr Sarkozy's six-month-old presidency. He has just endured a nine-day public-transport strike, which brought chaos to the capital's roads and enraged commuters. Students have been blockading university campuses for weeks in protest at higher-education reform. Magistrates are holding a one-day strike on Thursday against judicial reform. It is one thing to deal with this form of organised discontent on the streets. The disorganised criminal violence that broke out this week is altogether more unpredictable.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3920292&page=1

French Riots: 'Urban Guerilla Warfare' 
Latest Outburst Is More Intense Than 2005 Riots, Police Say 
 
By JEAN-NICHOLAS FIEVET and CHRISTOPHE SCHPOLIANSKY
LONDON, Nov. 27, 2007 
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Gangs of youths fought running battles with police Monday for a second consecutive night in a suburb north of Paris. It was an outburst many said was surprising in its intensity. 

Their faces hidden behind scarves and hoods, rioters used firearms and hurled Molotov cocktails, paving stones and firecrackers at cops, injuring 77 officers. Four police officers remain hospitalized with air gun and shotgun wounds. 

Cmdr. Mohamed Douhane of police union Synergie described the rioting to ABC News as "open rebellion," with youths operating like "urban guerrillas." 
"We are dealing with groups of louts who are very mobile, very determined, and who are not hesitating to use firearms to shoot at policemen like rabbits," he said. 

About 100 young men set fire to cars and several buildings in the suburb of in Villiers-le-Bel, 12 miles north of the French capital. The fire service quickly arrived on the scene and was able to control most of the flames. 

The only building to suffer serious damage was the local public library. Some of those rioting Monday night were said to have been as young as 10 years old. 

Riot police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. 

Monday's rioting came a day after two teenagers were killed in a traffic accident involving a police vehicle in the same suburb of Villiers-le-Bel. Police have said that a 15-year-old and 16-year-old were riding on a small motorbike that collided with a police car out on a routine patrol. 

Their deaths sparked riots Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, and the surrounding areas of Gonesse, Sarcelles and Arnouville. Around 30 cars and several buildings were set ablaze. Eight arrests were made, and 20 police officers were injured. 

A preliminary investigation by police Monday appeared to clear the officers of responsibility for the road accident. 

French Prime Minister François Fillon said today that "those who fire on the police are criminals. They will be treated as such," saying that additional security forces would be deployed in the Parisian suburbs Tuesday night. 

Yesterday's riots are reminiscent of the violence that swept across Paris' outlying suburbs in the autumn of 2005 and spread to the rest of the country. Those, too, were sparked by the deaths of two youths, electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police. 

So far, the riots over the past couple of days have been much smaller in scope but more intense, according to police. 


"Violence against the police has radicalized itself, with a quasi-systematic use of firearms," Douhane told ABC News. 

"This is a new development, compared to the riots of two years ago. In 2005, there were two shots fired at the police, but that was after several weeks of violence; 77 policemen were wounded last night, while in 2005, during three weeks of violence, a total of 126 policemen and gendarmes were wounded." 

Monday youths built improvised barricades out of trash cans and rubble. Eyewitnesses described the rioters as organized and disciplined. 

Sebastian Roché, a sociologist and author at think-tank CNRS, agreed. He told ABC News that "the rioters have learned from 2005. They use garbage covers as shields. Some are very determined, and are prepared to use weapons that can kill. The violence has reached a new level." 

Monday night one youth was seen with a two-way radio tuned in to a police frequency. 

Sebastian Roché believes that it's too early to know if the violence will spread. Police representatives told ABC News that the potential for further escalation "is of great concern." 

Three local mayors said that the situation in the suburbs since 2005 had not only failed to improve but has indeed worsened. "In the autumn of 2005, French politicians seemed to wake up to the serious problems in the suburbs," wrote Claude Dilain, Stéphane Gatignon and François Pupponi in the daily newspaper Le Monde. 

"Yet the situation continues to deteriorate. All the data points to increases in social exclusion, unemployment, street violence . communities are unravelling, and when people feel abandoned, they have a tendency to turn in on themselves."

ONZUS, a government agency that monitors urban areas, confirmed that despite a small drop in crime since 2005, unemployment in these neighborhoods remained twice as high as the national average. 

France's political parties, and the families of the killed teenagers, have condemned the latest violence and urged for calm. While on an official visit to China today, Nicolas Sarkozy called for the justice system to take its course and determine who is responsible. 

Wednesday the French president is expected to visit injured police officers in the hospital, meet the families of the killed teenagers and convene a meeting of ministers to discuss his government's response. 
As Interior Minister during the 2005 riots, Sarkozy caused considerable controversy when he declared that the restive suburbs needed "cleansing," and described the youths as "rabble." 

Police commander Mohamed Douhane told ABC News today that a minority of young people in the French suburbs reject state institutions, and the police in particular. "They use an excuse, a tragic event in this case, to express their hatred of society by the most violent means." 

Christophe Schpoliansky reported from Paris.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/280563

A French `insurrection'
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Sarkozy calls for calm as police clamp down on youth riots described as `more violent than 2005'

Nov 28, 2007 04:30 AM 
Nicolas Garriga 
ASSOCIATED PRESS


VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France-Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late yesterday as police struggled to contain rioters who burned cars and buildings - and shot at officers.

During 200 nights of clashes between ghetto youth and riot police in 2005, there was only one death and sporadic injuries. But after only two nights of confrontations this week, 80 police were hospitalized, including six seriously injured when rioters pummelled them with stones, gas bombs and firecrackers. At least two dozen officers were hit by pellets fired from long guns.

"We're talking about insurrection," Patrice Ribeiro, of the police union Synergie Officers, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's more violent than in 2005 ... We have armed people shooting at police.''

Bands of young people set more cars on fire in and around Villiers-le-Bel, the suburb where rioting first erupted, and 22 youths were arrested, the regional government said. In the southern city of Toulouse, 20 cars were set ablaze but fires at two libraries were under control, police said.

Prime Minister François Fillon, who was briefed by police in Villiers-le-Bel, said things were "much calmer than the previous two nights, but ... still fragile, and we need a large preventive force on the ground so that what happened last night does not happen again.''

Police reinforcements were moved to trouble spots yesterday. as helicopters flew overhead, shining powerful spotlights into apartment buildings to keep people at home.

About 1,000 officers patrolled in and around Villiers-le-Bel yesterday, Fillon said.

One rioter with a shotgun "was firing off two shots, reloading in a stairwell, coming back out - boom, boom - and firing again,'' said Gilles Wiart, an official in the SGP-FO police union. "I don't think it's an ethnic problem. Most of all it is youths who reject all state authority. They attack firefighters, everything that represents the state.''

The trigger was the deaths Sunday of two minority teens when their motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on the northern edge of Paris.

Suspicion of police runs high in the housing project where they died. Media gave only their first names, Lakhami, 16, and Mouhsin, 15.

The riots present a stern test for new President Nicolas Sarkozy, showing anger still smoulders in France's poor neighbourhoods, where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of French society.

Residents claimed the officers left without helping the teens. Prosecutor Marie-Thérèse de Givry denied that, saying police stayed on the scene until firefighters arrived.

Rioting and arson erupted after the crash. Violence worsened overnight Monday as rioters burned a library, a nursery school and a car dealership. Eight rioters convicted yesterday in fast-track trials were jailed three to 10 months.

"The situation is under control," said Denis Joubert, director of public safety for the region.



Sarkozy, speaking from China, appealed for calm and called a security meeting of cabinet for today on his return home. In 2005, he was the hard-line interior minister, in charge of police during three weeks of riots, who angered project dwellers when he called delinquents there "scum.''

The rioting youth "want Sarkozy - they want him to come and explain" what happened to the two teens, said Linda Beddar, 40, a mother of three in Villiers-le-Bel. She woke yesterday to find the library across from her house a burned-out shell.

The 2005 riots also began in the northern suburbs, after two teens were electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police. 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/fran-n30.shtml

France: drumhead tribunals and threats of police state repression
By Alex Lantier
30 November 2007
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The French government's response to three nights of anti-police rioting in Paris's poorer north suburbs has been a ruthless assault on local inhabitants and on democratic rights. With 1,000 policemen already deployed against rioters, President Nicolas Sarkozy gave two bellicose speeches yesterday-one in front of 2,000 massed policemen at the corporate La Défense district, another on prime-time national television-threatening stiff jail terms for rioters and promising massive equipment purchases for police. At the same time, the courts are passing draconian sentences in drumhead tribunals against youth picked up by police on suburban streets, often on the flimsiest evidence.

The riots were sparked by the deaths of two youths in Villiers-le-Bel Sunday afternoon, in a collision between their motorbike and a police car. According to testimony of residents, the policemen fled the scene, leaving the two youths to die. The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) issued a report Monday largely clearing the police of responsibility, but the report itself was found to be in contradiction with a video of the accident and the accounts given by Villiers-le-Bel's inhabitants.

In Villiers-le-Bel and surrounding areas, still sectioned off by police after a night without rioting, inhabitants expressed their frustration. One of them told the daily Le Monde: "The police, this is all theater; they're coming here with weapons and ski masks." Le Monde carried disturbing pictures of policemen, inexplicably dressed as civilians and wearing ski masks, but carrying shotguns and assault rifles with infrared sights, guarding intersections.

Police surveillance helicopters, flying low, shone powerful headlights down on streets and buildings. One resident commented: "You'd think we were at war, they're provoking the youth." Another yelled, "Hey, you, extra-terrestrials!" at the circling helicopters.

Prime Minister François Fillon confirmed that the purpose of the deployment was to intimidate the population: "The situation is much more calm than the two previous nights, but all that remains, we well know, very fragile and we need a major dissuasive force in the area to prevent what happened the previous night from re-occurring."

The identity of the youths dragged off the streets and given summary judgments in French courts confirms that what is taking place is not a crackdown on violent gangs, but the terrorizing of working-class youth from oppressed layers of the population. Thirty-nine youths are still being watched by police, according to the daily Libération, and eight have been judged so far.

Cédric is a part-time plumber finishing vocational school, with no police record. Accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at police, he said he "panicked" when he was caught in a volley of tear-gas grenades while walking home from his 20th birthday party and tried to escape by scaling a barricade. Prosecutors demanded that he be sentenced to 30 months in jail, causing "stupor in the courtroom," according to press accounts. Cédric's lawyer responded by pleading that the judge "only consider the actual contents of the case" against her client. Cédric received a one-year prison sentence without parole.

Two teenagers, Jean-Matthieu and Alan, one on a short-term contract as a shipping package preparer and another a part-time warehouse stocker, received three-month prison terms without parole for being found with packs of candy they said they found on the street. They were taken directly to prison from the arms of their parents. Neither one had a police record.

Noël, a 21-year old part-time security guard, was the only youth tried yesterday with a police record-for driving last year without proper auto insurance. The police accused him of torching cars with gasoline and "busying himself with the burning cars." The prosecutor announced, "The facts are clear," adding that "unless you subscribe to a massive conspiracy theory, there is no reason to doubt [police] accounts." Noël's lawyer pointed out that a burning car gives off powerful smells that "get into your hair, your clothes," whereas his client bore no such traces. Noël was the only accused youth to be released.

As one defense lawyer, Laurence Benitez de Lugo, told Le Monde: "There is a desire for a firm, immediate response which is not arrived at serenely." To speak more plainly, the French courts are carrying out politically-motivated show trials in a blatant assault on the democratic rights of the accused and, by extension, of the entire French population.

Sarkozy and his officials are deliberately stoking panic by slandering the inhabitants of Villiers-le-Bel, distorting the seriousness of the riots, and calling for drastic increases in police powers and equipment.

In an address to the nation on TF1 television's prime-time 8 p.m. news bulletin, Sarkozy provocatively denied that there was any "social crisis" in the suburbs and claimed that recent events were the result of "hoodlum-ocracy." He said that youth opposing police in Villiers-le-Bel were "drug traffickers."

Sarkozy delivered similar comments in somewhat expanded form before an assembly of 2,000 policemen at La Défense in the west Paris suburbs. He said, "The right response to the riots is not more money on the taxpayers' tab. The right response is to arrest the rioters." Stressing that there was no social crisis in the suburbs, he demagogically attacked "those who would lecture us" about social issues but "don't know what it's like to be in uniform, facing rabid gangs."

One can appreciate the level of shamelessness in Sarkozy's comments by noting that, as of April 2007, his presidential campaign was on the record as supporting a "new Marshall Plan" for the poorer suburbs, a reference to the US financial assistance that helped rebuild Western European capitalism after World War II. Of course, being committed to budgetary austerity and appealing to the anti-immigrant vote, Sarkozy never seriously intended to carry out such a plan. However, the denial of elementary reality-that the poorer, immigrant suburbs in France house the most oppressed layers of the working class and face a massive social crisis-is a qualitatively new element of French politics.

Despite having recently succeeded in using the trade union bureaucracy to end a strike by rail and energy workers against pension cuts, Sarkozy's regime faces a deteriorating political situation. According to a recent poll carried out by Sofrès for the conservative daily Le Figaro, Sarkozy's approval rating has recently dipped below 50 percent for the first time in his presidency. The approval rating for his prime minister, François Fillon, has fallen to 44 percent.

Ruling circles are highly conscious of the fact that public sector resentment over salary and pension cuts extends to within the police force, and particularly the gendarmerie military police-who are responsible for policing rural areas, state security, and military police duties in foreign interventions of the French armed forces. As members of the military, the gendarmes are denied union representation. However, several detachments of gendarmes participated in the November strikes against pension cuts. They also resent the fact that the police are substantially better paid.

In his speech at La Défense, Sarkozy promised to convene a "joint working group" to study how to "erase" the distinctions between police and gendarmes. However, his main method for appealing to the police forces was the promotion of hostility towards the suburbs and stoking an atmosphere of civil war.

Referring to the fact that several policemen were hit with pellets fired from hunting rifles belonging to unknown persons during the Villiers-le-Bel riots, Sarkozy promised the policemen that those who have "taken the responsibility of firing on public officials will find themselves before the Assizes"-France's criminal courts.

He then called for a massive increase in the use of video-surveillance cameras, high-range flash-ball guns, and Taser electric guns. Making it sound as if every high-rise residential complex was firing on police, he added that surveillance helicopters would have been invaluable in finding "stocks of weapons on the roofs of apartment complexes," and called for the purchase of more such helicopters.

There is a definite political logic to such inflammatory language. As far as Sarkozy's patrons in French business circles are concerned, his task is to eliminate the social concessions granted to the French working class, which are hurting the competitiveness of French business and which his predecessors over the last decade tried but failed to fully dismantle. They are fully conscious of the powerful social tensions that such a policy will release.

Thus, shortly after Sarkozy's election, economist Nicolas Baverez wrote in the right-wing Revue des Deux Mondes: "The 2007 election [won by Sarkozy] is the last opportunity, the last chance to modernize our country without a civil war."

The government's handling of the Villiers-le-Bel crisis should be taken as a signal that, in the face of growing political opposition to Sarkozy's rule, the French ruling elite is increasingly considering the option of civil war against the population.

http://www.thomsonfxhub.com/fxhub/news-detail.jsf?newsId=4187

France's Sarkozy sees approval rating go under 50 pct ahead of key TV address 


- PARIS (Thomson Financial) - French president Nicolas Sarkozy's approval rating has slipped below the 50 pct mark for the first time since his election in May, according to a poll released Thursday ahead of a live TV interview this evening.

According to the TNS-Sofres poll, carried out last week at the height of a paralysing transport strike but before the wave of unrest in one of Paris' suburbs, 49 pct of the French public trust Sarkozy to 'solve France's problems'.

Sarkozy's confidence rating was down four points since the previous month, and showed a 15-point drop since September.

The same number, 49 pct, said they were confident in Sarkozy's work as head of state, according to the poll to appear in Le Figaro Magazine on Saturday.

On the back of a nine-day transport strike over pensions reform, 76 pct of respondents said they expected France to experience 'a lot of social conflict' in the coming three months.

French morale has also been badly hit by stagnating wages, and rising inflation, with polls citing purchasing power as a growing concern for the public. 

This mood was illustrated by today's monthly survey from statistics office Insee showing that consumer confidence fell much much further than expected by economists.

In this evening's interview, president Sarkozy has promised to unveil measures to boost consumer purchasing power.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/29/europe/riots.php#end_main



'Caught in the middle' of French unrest


By Katrin Bennhold Published: November 29, 2007

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VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France: The first thing everyone mentions is the helicopters, the relentless throbbing of blades cutting through the skies above the housing projects and the probing searchlights that have kept the residents of this heavily immigrant suburb of Paris awake over the last four nights.

The gunfire that echoed off the walls of the tower blocks in a violent outburst of rioting this week has subsided. But the calm, enforced by 1,000 police officers deployed at sunset every night, had a precarious feel to it Thursday as locals, caught in the middle between angry youths and the police, tried to make do with an undeclared state of emergency that has hobbled their daily lives in multiple ways.

"It feels like we live in a war zone," said Nadège Tanier, a 40-year-old mother of two, as she walked by the burned-out hulk of a garbage truck still reeking of burned tires. "I feel safer for having all those cops on the streets and the helicopter at night making sure the kids are not planning more riots, but it sure is hard to live like this."

There is no curfew, but few people go out after dark, when rows of shielded riot police move in to take up positions around the town north of Paris. Buses, a popular target for youths with firebombs in the past, have stopped running in the early evenings, making it hard for people to come home from work. Many shops lock up hours before their normal closing time, partly for fear of vandalism, partly because few customers dare shop after dark. The Tunisian owner of a local bakery, Habib Friaa, said his staff was baking only half as many baguettes as usual because business had slumped.

Some damage could be more permanent. Among the buildings that were torched Sunday and Monday was a complex housing a nursery school and a library with a children's section. The 135 children who are enrolled in the preschool had to be relocated to four makeshift classrooms in a nearby primary school. But the library, described by several parents here as a sort of community center for children, a refuge for those hungry to learn, is gone for now.

 
Tanier, whose 11-year-old daughter, Emiline, visited the library regularly, said children in the neighborhood have been traumatized by the sight of the charred ruin. Emiline, a slight girl with long blond hair who was wrapped up in a puffy winter coat, said she was scared that her school would also be burned down. The city authorities have made a child psychologist available to the school to counsel distraught pupils.

On Thursday, a group of 12-year-old girls climbed through the shattered windows into what was once the reading room. One of them, pulling at a scorched volume, said they had hoped to find a few books they could save. But they left empty-handed.

Just last week, Cise Tanjigora's 8-year-old son, Adama, went to borrow a book for the first time after his class had visited the library a few days earlier. "I was so proud of him," said Tanjigora, a 40-year-old French woman of Senegalese origin who was clothed in bright-colored African garb. "What have they done? This is a poor town, parents don't have much money to buy books. There is no other library nearby."

Tanjigora, meanwhile, has been walking 45 minutes to the nearest suburban train stop leading into Paris, because the buses are not running when she needs to leave to work her evening shift.

President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the recent rioting in harsh terms Thursday, blaming what he called a "thugocracy" of criminals for the violence.

"I reject any form of other-worldly naïveté that wants to see a victim of society in anyone who breaks the law, a social problem in any riot," he said in a speech to police officers west of Paris. "What happened in Villiers-le-Bel has nothing to do with a social crisis. It has everything to do with a thugocracy."

The 48 hours of rage that shook the town - reminiscent of three weeks of unrest across France in 2005 - were triggered by the deaths of two local teenagers whose motorbike collided with a police car Sunday.

The police are not popular here, even among those who accept that they helped stop the violence and who are grateful for the calm.

But in interviews with residents Thursday, it became plain that there was little sympathy for rioters claiming to seek revenge for their friends' deaths.

"I don't like the way police are treating the kids sometimes, and I know they have not got many economic opportunities, but there is no excuse for the violence and the destruction," said Nora Hemmal, a Moroccan immigrant, who had hoped to enroll her one-year-old daughter next year in the nursery that was destroyed.

"Most of us are just caught in the middle," she said.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/fran-d01.shtml

Police maintain their occupation of Paris working class suburb
By Antoine Lerougetel
1 December 2007
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has responded to three nights of anti-police rioting in Paris's impoverished northern suburbs with a massive build-up of the repressive powers of the state.

The rioting began in Villiers-le-Bel when two immigrant boys, Larami (16) and Moushin (15), were killed after a collision with a police car. An occupying force of a thousand police officers will remain in the largely immigrant suburb until Sunday, according to Michèle Alliot-Marie, the minister of the interior. The riot police, deployed since Tuesday, have firearms and are equipped with full riot gear, teargas, flash balls and at least two helicopters with powerful searchlights.

On Thursday afternoon the authorities reported some 60 people being held in custody. Seven have been sentenced on charges related to the rioting. The Pontoise criminal court reported prison sentences ranging from 3 to 8 months for three young adults.

Sarkozy spoke at length on Thursday about the situation in Villiers-le-Bel. In the morning he addressed a gathering of some 2,000 police personnel. In the evening he gave a prime time TV interview, which was also devoted to economic issues.

In his speech to the police, Sarkozy said he wanted the police and gendarmerie to be "the most modern in Europe." He said it was necessary to develop "non-lethal" weapons such as Taser pistols and a new generation of flash balls with a range of 40 metres, and promised to supply helicopters to search for weapons allegedly stashed on the roofs of high-rise flats.

He outlined a vision of a social order maintained by ever-increasing repressive measures, and flatly rejected any conception that poverty and unemployment on the urban council estates housing some 6 million French people were the cause of anti-police riots.

In Villiers-le-Bel, a town of 27,000, 39.5 percent of 16-to-25 year-olds are unemployed.

"What happened has nothing to do with a social crisis," Sarkozy said. "It's got everything to do with a hoodlumocracy." He then indulged in racist scape-goating after the manner of the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen: "There's social discontent, there's immigration which has not been controlled for years, ghettos with people who are not integrated."

He baldly stated that the explosion of anger against the police was the work of "drug dealers." Those who fire at the police, he threatened, "we will track down one by one."

There has been a media campaign asserting that the police are facing urban guerrilla warfare and are constantly under fire. A New York Times report claimed that 30 police suffered gunshot wounds. Where the Times obtained these figures is, however, not clear.

Sarkozy said 82 police had been injured since the fatal crash and declared that "individuals had shot at the police." He portrayed the police, who routinely brutalize the youth in the immigrant suburbs, as the victims, and the youth as the aggressors.

Sarkozy's line was fully supported by Secretary of State for Town Policy Fadela Amara. "Respect for the police is very important," she said. "We are facing urban, anarchic violence carried out by a minority, which casts opprobrium on the majority. That hard core makes use of the slightest protest to break, burn, smash up everything in the neighbourhood."

Amara is from a working class Algerian family. A Socialist Party member and feminist, she joined Sarkozy's right-wing Gaullist government soon after he was elected president in May.

Sarkozy's use of the Villiers-le-Bel tragedy to boost the repressive powers of the state is a continuation of his policy since he became minister of the interior in the Gaullist government under President Jacques Chirac in 2002.

A vast array of legislative measures, largely promoted by himself, has granted enhanced powers of surveillance and repression to the state: three immigration laws, the Prevention of Delinquency law, an anti-terror law which involves municipal officials, doctors, social workers and teachers in surveillance and control of the population.

The State of Emergency law was reactivated two years ago, using the 2005 urban youth riots as a justification. Previously utilized in 1955 during the French colonial occupation of Algeria, it was used against French citizens for the first time.

None of these measures received any significant opposition from the Socialist Party, the Communist Party or the unions. Now, these organisations, either explicitly or by default and silence, are doing nothing to defend working class communities from assault by the forces of the state. They have refused to come to the aid of the youth and families of Villiers-le-Bel. None have called for the withdrawal of the 1,000 police.

François Hollande, first secretary of the Socialist Party, said he was against Sarkozy's use of the word "hoodlumocracy" and his dismissal of the social crisis, but went on to fully support the president's build-up of state forces. "We do indeed have gangs which carry out criminal actions and which absolutely must be eradicated," he declared, adding that "all violence must not only be condemned, but punished." Practically every other Socialist Party commentator followed the same line, calling for an increased presence of community police.

The petty-bourgeois left, Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle-LO) and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League-LCR), all but ignored the anti-police riot and the massive build-up of the police. Both merely published a few lines on their web sites.

The Lutte Ouvrière newspaper published an article complaining that youth could no longer have any "confidence into the authorities, the prefects and the police."

"Undoubtedly," the article continued, "involved in these confrontations was a certain number of small mafia leaders who poison the life of the cities and who were possibly the first to set fire to shops, a library or a school... But this does not explain why hundreds of other youth joined them so rapidly."

The article complains of the miserable social conditions in the suburbs and remarks: "But the use of force and repression will evidently not resolve the basic problems that have caused these dramatic explosions that periodically enflame certain neighbourhoods." It ends by "urgently" calling for more schools and teachers. The state "must give a bit less to the richest and devote the necessary means to make life acceptable in the neighbourhoods."

This could have just as well been published in the Socialist Party or liberal press. There is no call for the withdrawal of the police, nor even a denunciation of the massive police presence.

Four years ago, LO gave much support to Fadela Amara's campaign to ban girls from wearing the Islamic headscarf in school. Thus, it supported a law of the right-wing government which strengthens state discrimination against immigrants.

The LCR was even more canny in its commentary on the Villiers-le-Bel events. Its spokesman, Olivier Besancenot, sent his condolences to the parents of the youth who had been killed and called for an "independent inquiry" into the incident, without specifying how and by whom this inquiry should be set up.

The editorial of the LCR's weekly Rouge stated, "[W]e must impose on the government that it establish an emergency plan for the neighbourhoods." It called for "the creation of jobs, more and strengthened social services, guarantees to subsidise organisations which create social cohesion, a halt to identity checks, and the suppression of the BAC (anti-crime squads)."

Like LO, the LCR did not call for the withdrawal of the police force and the mobilisation of the working class to defend the youth and families of the community.

Their mealy-mouthed proposals avoid a political struggle against Sarkozy's government. They disarm the working class as to the dangers to the democratic rights of the entire working population posed by the state repression in Villiers-le-Bel.

Having worked to provide political cover for the trade unions' betrayal last week of the railway workers' strike, they now put forward the illusion that the government can be pressured into a crash programme in favour of the poorest sections of the working class, working thereby to blind the working class to the nature of the Sarkozy regime and the need for an independent political struggle against the entire French ruling elite and bourgeois political establishment-"left" as well as right.
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