Posted on 11/08/2005 1:21:52 PM PST by Simmy2.5
PARIS - President Jacques Chirac declared a 12-day state of emergency Tuesday, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit cities and towns in an extraordinary measure to halt France's worst civil unrest in nearly four decades. Meanwhile, police said the nightly rioting that began Oct. 27 ago was showing signs of abating.
"The intensity of this violence is on the way down," National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said, citing fewer attacks on public buildings and fewer direct clashes between youths and police. He said rioting was reported in 226 towns across France, compared with nearly 300 the night before.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin reached out to heavily immigrant suburbs where the rioting began, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals.
The state-of-emergency decree — invoked under a 50-year-old law — allows curfews where needed and will become effective at midnight Tuesday, with an initial 12-day limit. Police who have been massively reinforced as the violence has fanned out from its initial flash point in Paris' northeastern suburbs were expected to enforce the curfews. The army has not been called in.
The mayhem sweeping the neglected and impoverished neighborhoods with large African and Arab communities is forcing France to confront anger building for decades among residents who complain of discrimination and unemployment. Although many French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants are Muslim, police say the violence is not being driven by Islamic groups.
Discrimination is a "daily and repeated" reality in tough suburbs, feeding the frustration of youths made to feel that they don't belong in France, he said.
"We must be lucid: The Republic is at a moment of truth," Villepin said at an impassioned parliamentary debate Tuesday where lawmakers also spoke frankly about France's failings.
"The effectiveness of our integration model is in question," the prime minister said. He called the riots "a warning" and "an appeal."
Nationwide, vandals burned 1,173 cars overnight Monday to Tuesday, compared with 1,408 vehicles the night before, police said. A total of 330 people were arrested, down from 395 the previous night.
Local officials "will be able to impose curfews on the areas where this decision applies," Chirac said at a Cabinet meeting. "It is necessary to accelerate the return to calm."
The recourse to a 1955 state-of-emergency law that dates back to France's war in Algeria was a measure both of the gravity of mayhem that has spread to hundreds of French towns and cities and of the determination of Chirac's sorely tested government to quash it.
Curfew violators face up to two months imprisonment and a $4,400 fine, the justice ministry said. Minors face one month in jail.
Under the emergency decree, officials can put troublemakers under house arrest, ban or limit the movement of people and vehicles, confiscate weapons, and close public spaces where gangs gather, Villepin said. But he cautioned that restoring order "will take time."
The violence erupted Oct. 27 as a localized riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation. It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths.
The unrest claimed its first victim Monday, with the death of a 61-year-old man beaten into a coma last week. Foreign governments have warned tourists to be careful in France. Apparent copycat attacks have spread to Belgium and Germany, where cars were burned.
France is using fast-track trials to punish rioters, worrying some human rights campaigners.
At one court in the northeastern Paris suburb of Bobigny, 60 riot-related cases were processed in one day and the court has called in three extra magistrates to deal with the overflow. The Justice Ministry said Tuesday that 52 adults and 23 minors have been sentenced to prison or detention centers.
The resort to curfews drew a cautious response from Chirac's political opponents.
The main opposition Socialists, through their parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault, said they did not oppose the use of curfews but also warned that they should not be used to hide suburban "misery" or become "a new mark of segregation."
Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet said the decree could enflame rioters. "It could be taken anew as a sort of challenge to carry out more violence," she said.
Late Monday, rioters in the southern city of Toulouse ordered passengers off a bus, then set it on fire and pelted police with gasoline bombs and rocks. Youths also torched another bus in the northeastern Paris suburb of Stains, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said.
Outside Paris in Sevran, a junior high school was set ablaze, while in the suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine youths threw gasoline bombs at a hospital, Hamon said. Nobody was injured.
Rioters also attacked a police station with gasoline bombs in Chenove, in Burgundy's Cote D'Or, Hamon said. A nursery school in Lille-Fives, in northern France, was set on fire, regional officials said.
French historians say the rioting is more widespread and more destructive in material terms than the May riots of 1968, when university students erected barricades in Paris' Latin Quarter and across France, throwing paving stones at police. That unrest, a turning point in modern France, led to a general strike by 10 million workers and forced President Gen. Charles De Gaulle to dissolve parliament and fire Premier Georges Pompidou.
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Associated Press Writers Jamey Keaten, Jocelyn Gecjer, D'Arcy Doran and John Leicester contributed to this report.
When will it end?
It's called wishful thinking.
When Ze White Flag is raised!
Lucky 13?
The Paris Intifada continues. Bringing Gaza to the City of Lights!
who knows. . .perhaps it will only end, when they run out of cars. . .
Weren't we told by the French government that the riots were calming down last week?
So much for the theory that it is all "disaffected youths" and "kids".
Wow...they're down to only 1,173 cars burned in a night. I'd say they got this thing nipped. Nice job France!
It is the nature of rabble to run out of enthusiasm fairly quickly. They all have work to do back at shantytown and staying out all night is cutting into productivity. They are getting tired, and very bored with this.
Takes them five paragraphs to say the "M" word, and then only to reassure readers that they could not possibly be to blame.
They really don't have any spine do they...the muslims are gonna eat them up.
The muslim “youths” are calling for an end to the French government’s(police) occupation of their neighborhoods.
Strange how the universe strikes a balance:
The Frogs are suffering from a plague of Egyptians.
Do people in France pay car insurance the same way we do, and will those insurance companies have to pay for all this?
How many cars do they have anyway and wouldn't most people be getting their cars the heck out of there?
Black out curtains to be drawn. German airforce said to be headed for Paris. Tanks crossing the border. French troops running in fear. White flags being handed out as we speak.
I wonder if Progressive Insurance writes policies there? I'd like to see them get hit for some big losses.
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