The Bastille
Posted on 11/01/2005 8:13:18 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
GANGS of youths in towns around Paris clashed with police and torched cars and trash cans overnight as violence that has plagued one poor suburb for almost a week spread around the French capital, police and local authorities said today.
The epicentre of the trouble, which first erupted last Thursday after the deaths of two teenagers, is the poor northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in the Seine-Saint-Denis department.
Police sources reported about 60 vehicles torched throughout the Seine-Saint-Denis area overnight.
In the towns of Aulnay-sous-Bois and Sevran, gangs of stone-throwing youths were met by police firing disabling rubber "flash-balls" to disperse them.
"It's a rough night," a departmental spokesman said.
There was less trouble overnight in Clichy-sous-Bois itself - which has a large immigrant and Muslim population - partly due to the heavy police presence there.
But more worryingly for the security forces, there were pockets of similar trouble for the first time in several other departments ringing Paris.
Cars were torched and police reported sporadic incidents involving groups of youths in Val-d'Oise to the north of the capital and Seine-et-Marne to the southeast with lesser violence reported in Yvelines to the west.
French government leaders came under fire yesterday for their handling of the unrest.
The main opposition Socialists accused President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of an "inexcusable" silence over the violence.
But most of their anger was directed toward Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious interior minister and would-be president, whose tough rhetoric on urban crime has aroused charges of pandering to the far right.
"When an interior minister doesn't hesitate to use insulting terms, branding as 'rabble' communities which have the misfortune to be fragile and wanting to turn water-cannon on them, it is the image of the country that is tarnished," the Socialist Party said.
Mr Sarkozy, who is also leader of France's ruling UMP party, vowed to wage a "war without mercy" on crime in the Paris suburbs a week before the rampages began.
The violence in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, erupted after two youths, aged 15 and 19, were electrocuted after scaling the wall of a relay station and touching a transformer.
The local public prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the boys thought they were being chased by police, but authorities denied that was the case.
A judicial enquiry has been opened to determine the sequence of events leading up to the electrocution deaths of the two youths last week, which first sparked the violence.
About 30 official and youth leaders met Mr Sarkozy late yesterday to discuss the situation.
The ministry said that participants had considered the growing concern over poor living conditions in the worst-off suburbs where "the residents encounter serious problems".
Mr Sarkozy spoke of the need for "considerable efforts" and promised town mayors help in "effecting the best responses" in particular in the areas of unemployment, education and infrastructure.
Suburbs as as Clichy-sous-Bois suffer from unemployment rates more than twice the national average, which is already relatively high at about 10 per cent.
At least last night's violence included less of the direct clashes between youths and police seen on previous nights in Clichy-sous-Bois, police and municipal sources said.
Along with the dozens of torched vehicles, a carpet warehouse was set ablaze in another Seine-Saint-Denis town overnight, but no one was hurt.
So, anyone want to take bets on how long it'll be before the French surrender to the "peace-loving" muslims?
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS : “Un Bakon halal ou un double Koull Cheese ?”: au spacieux et coquet “Beurger King Muslim” récemment ouvert entre deux cités de Clichy-sous-Bois, les employées peuvent garder leur voile et les familles déguster des burger halal à toutes les sauces. actement le système et le décor du fast-food à l’américaine.
No, no, no. You have to use the proper european phraseology. They're Freedom Fighters.
Doesn't the cop in the front of this picture look like Jacque Fraud Kerrie??
Maybe the young men were attempting to illegally tap the power lines
Bring back the "National Razor."
Two kids died. They weren't actually being chased by police, but that's the word that got out and about.
That sparked a riot.
Notice, please, that things have been burnt and stones thrown, but there have not been killings. The youths throw rocks and burn things, which happens in other places without it being the end of civilization as we know it,[http://www.freep.com/news/locway/angels31e_20051031.htm],
but in the French tradition, nobody is getting killed. This is not a case of pitched battles with firearms between the police and the Sarassin hordes, no matter how many times that is spun.
This is an angry street protest that has gone wild, but it has not crossed the line into killings. That is probably the most important thing to see.
The police will obviously continue to be present and place pressure upon all such disturbances, but the solution is to have a variety of sham talks so that people calm down and go back home (but the police stay, so that there are no victory marches and the like), and then return to normalcy. Actually fixing such places is impossible. No civilization has ever managed it, and none will.
Intelligence services, of course, will press further against Islamist clerics, to make sure that street actions do not turn into deadly attacks.
The anti-immigrant right will gain in stature electorally now. Watch Philippe de Villiers.
A little like Kerry and a little like Le Beau on Hogan's Heroes.
...hate to say it, but the fwench are entitled to a great big: "told you so"...yeah, appeasement and tolerance is the way to negotiate with this evil cult of hating anything that isn't islam...
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