Posted on 10/30/2005 5:06:42 PM PST by blam
Fires of 'civil war' erupt in Paris
Police in street battles after two teenagers die in chase
Jason Burke in Paris
Sunday October 30, 2005
The Observer (UK)
Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a northern Paris suburb early yesterday morning in a second successive night of rioting.
The disorder was triggered last week when two teenagers were electrocuted and killed in a local substation while fleeing from police. French authorities insist they were running away from officers investigating a break-in, but people in Clichy-sous-Bois claim that the dead youths had committed no crime.
Yesterday afternoon a silent march was held to the town hall in the centre of the suburb. Many protesters wore T-shirts bearing the message: 'Dead for Nothing'.
'We respect the republic, said Siako Karne, the brother of one of the dead men. 'The republic has to respect us.'
Firefighters extinguished more than 30 burning cars and dozens of dustbins pushed into makeshift barricades on Friday night and Saturday morning as running battles in the streets of the north-eastern suburb pitted more than 200 riot police against scores of hooded youths. At least one shot was fired at the police, 19 people were detained and 15 officers and one journalist injured, an official spokesman said.
An officer from police trade union Action Police CFTC called for help from the army to support police officers. 'There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,' Michel Thooris from Action Police CFTC, said. 'My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical nor theoretical training for street fighting.'
Clichy-sous-Bois is home to 28,300 people a large number of whom are recent immigrants from North or Central Africa. Most live in rundown, low-rise public housing estates. Unemployment rates are among the highest in France and many locals see the police as 'the enemy'.
Claude Dilain, Socialist mayor of the suburb, called for an 'efficient, rapid and transparent investigation' into the deaths of the two teenagers. A relative of one of the dead youths, who were identified by local media as 15-year-old Banou and 17-year-old Ziad, said that the two were among nine boys were playing football and 'doing nothing wrong'. 'But one of them did not have an identity card, and so they were scared when they saw the police and ran,' she said.
According to the mayor, 'no particular recent tension' preceded the riots.
The violence has focused attention once more on France's Interior Minster, Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, whose law and order policies have drawn frequent criticism from human rights groups, launched a new offensive against crime this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 tough neighbourhoods in cities across France.
Delphine Batho, the opposition Socialist Party security spokesperson, called for 'serious answers' to the questions raised by the violence.
But every group picked up "tag-alongs" as they went. At the climatic battle between the "Huns" and the "Romans" in Gaul the armies on both sides were pretty much alike. Each, of course, was formed around a cadre, and very different ones.
Yes, 'Africans' is PC. Muzzies would be the correct term.
Unfortunatly, most of these folks are legal.
Thanks for the link.
LOL. Gets the 'Chuckle fo the Day' award.
The French youths are very unruly.
This was what stuck out as most shocking to me in a post 911 world.
"An officer from police trade union Action Police CFTC called for help from the army to support police officers. 'There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,' Michel Thooris from Action Police CFTC, said. 'My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical nor theoretical training for street fighting.'"
OH! Wow that picture from the French Civil War almost caused me to hurt myself I laughed so hard
That's funny, the Germans said the same thing about you.
Hopefully he's like another "hammer"... Charles Martel.
Or Mohammedans.
I do need to correct something I said, though. His lineage is not Romanian (that must have been wishful thinking on my part...hoping for another Vlad the impaler). I should have said Hungarian instead of Romanian (and, as I said, Greek with a Jewish grandfather in the Greek line I think).
Do you consider that the riots are then fueled by racism against Muslims by the native born French?
Feuled by racism, and the lack of opportunity in european countries. We have many Muslims immigrants in the US, and virtually no immigrant Muslim crime problem.( In the past, I have worked closely with the criminal justice system.)
2. We did have a problem with Arab Muslim gangs when I lived in Brooklyn (particularly in the Heroin trade). Pakistanis are also active in the heroin trade on the east coast. Because their numbers are relatively small compared to the black and Latino gangs, they don't attract as much notice.
3. Many US "Muslims" are actually members of the Nation of Islam.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."
But maybe a Muslim terrorism problem...the ones who flew the planes lived here, and there have been many foiled incidents. Look at Jihad Joe in Norman, OK. He was hanging with Muslims. I don't know if you read up on those threads, pretty dam' suspicious.
Whatever's being taught in mosques in the US may not just be "love God and love everyone else".
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