Posted on 11/03/2005 1:22:00 PM PST by Eurotwit
PARIS (AFP) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed his government "will not give in" to rioters, even as police braced for an eighth night of violence on the outskirts of Paris.
"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," he declared in parliament.
More than 1,300 police were deployed to again do battle with groups of stone- and bottle-throwing youths that have torched hundreds of vehicles and vandalised buildings in rampages in low-income, high-immigrant districts since last week.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose hardline law-and-order policies have been blamed for fanning the acts of defiance, said 143 people have so far been arrested in the clashes. More than two dozen police have been hurt.
In a serious sign of an escalation, four shots were fired at officers overnight Wednesday, though none struck their targets. A total of 315 vehicles were set fire to during the night, and a police station was ransacked.
The riots were sparked a week ago by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who had hidden in an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check in the suburb at the epicentre of the troubles, Clichy-sous-Bois.
Since then, they have spread, first to neighbouring suburbs and finally to every compass point around the French capital.
In many cases, the gangs of youths avoided direct confrontation with police, preferring to run away after setting cars or property on fire.
Often, though, police and firemen were targeted by thrown objects, ranging from stones to bottles filled with petrol. One fireman suffered second-degree burns to his face from a Molotov cocktail.
Sarkozy said the street violence that occurred in the most restive area, the northeastern region of Seine-Saint-Denis, overnight Wednesday "was not spontaneous, it was perfectly organized -- we are looking into by whom and how."
The interior minister, who harbours presidential ambitions, last month promised to wage a "war without mercy" on youth crime.
Some of the youths taking part in the troubles have responded by pledging to continue the "war" against the police "until Sarkozy resigns."
Villepin -- who cancelled a trip to Canada to tackle the crisis -- called the violence "unacceptable" and said restoring order was the government's "absolute top priority."
President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday called for calm, warning that an escalation would be "dangerous".
For sociologists and many commentators in France, the riots have laid bare the failure of successive government's policies in addressing the grim existence of those living in run-down public housing estates, some of them little more than ghettos where crime and gangs run rampant.
The country has 751 neighbourhoods officially classed as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the population.
Conditions are often dire with high-rise housing, unemployment at twice the national rate of 10 percent and per capita incomes 40 percent below the national average.
Many of France's estimated five million Muslims live in those suburbs, and authorities were left wondering whether the end overnight Thursday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan would bring more or less violence.
Ha! ping
Dom should simply recognize the quagmire that Jacques Chirac has created and get out of the way of the insurgents.
They barely even acknowledge the islamic component to these riots. It’s all about the government cheese to them.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1896743
If I remember correctly, they hosted the ayatollah khomeni during his exile, didn't they?
"The situation in Paris is just too rich for irony."
La Ligne Maginot Nouveau.
I would have faith if the mobs were unarmed in France. They have reportedly already fired shots at the police and firemen. If they fire shots at the French Military, it will no longer be France, but Fraghanistan.
Yes, it all demonstrates the vast superiority of the European social model, doesn't it?
They will not surrender! Some concessions, however, have been proposed. They're willing to take the red and blue parts out of the French flag.
Hey Sarky, are we finding out how the "cycle of violence" really works?
There were far more deadly riots in this country after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than before it. And considering the loss of life of many innocent people and the damage to property, those riots weren't justified.
Any day now the moos will claim that Paris is "one of the holiest sites in islam" and demand ownership.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I'm not optimistic for Europe's future.
Maybe they finally made the French mad enough to react.
Sarkozy is as close to a Republican as France has. He was the leading candidate to replace Chirac. I don't know how this wave of violence will affect his presidential ambitions.
They knew how to deal with Greenpeace, as well.
nothing is done spontaneously when it comes to Islam. Everyone waits for their marching orders. What we have been witnessing is the expression of Islamic power during the Night of Power of Ramadan. This is the night when the power of Islam is brought to bear.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/introducingislam/Worship/Fasting/article08.shtml
Blogs were saying French public opinion is like 10 to 1 in favor of Sarkozy's hard line - - - but the press has been trying to hide it . . .
Burn, Baby, Burn!
That's something I hadn't heard before. I had heard that they were killed when the police chased them, but not that they had hidden in an electrical substation. I guess the Koran didn't warn them not to touch the big wires.
As near as I can tell, cac-40 (french dj) is up about 2% since the riots started.
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