Posted on 11/03/2005 7:54:49 AM PST by ncountylee
LE BLANC MESNIL, France (AP) - Farah, an 8-year-old budding gymnast, cried when she saw the gutted wreckage of her gym crackling with flames and spewing smoke, destroyed in the latest nighttime rampage by immigrant youths in suburban Paris.
She, her father and hundreds of other residents poured into the streets by the Les Tilleuls housing complex in the Seine-Saint-Denis region Wednesday night as firefighters and police struggled to keep order during a seventh night of riots northeast of the capital.
"It is saddening," said Farah's father, Mohammed Fawzi Kaci, 47, proudly showing a picture on his mobile phone of his shy daughter wearing tights and performing a split. "Where is she going to practice now?"
A kindergarten, a gymnasium, government offices and hundreds of cars have been torched in the past week by youths in largely immigrant areas who began rioting after two of their peers were electrocuted at a power substation while hiding from police they feared were chasing them.
As violence raged again Wednesday night, families leaned off balconies or peered through curtains to snap photographs of trucks spilling shield-carrying riot police into the streets between concrete housing towers.
Many residents said they were sympathetic to the anger of young French citizens of largely sub-Saharan and North African descent but could not understand why rioters were targeting cars and buildings in their already impoverished areas.
"They are stupid. They are destroying everything," said an 18-year-old who gave her name only as Mariam. "They should do that in southwest Paris or at the National Assembly - not here. People here are suffering already."
Christophe Berthossi, head of the Immigration and Citizenship Program at the French Institute of International Relations think tank, said France has ignored suburban neglect and discrimination for too long.
"This is an area where the unemployment rate is 20 percentage points higher than the national average," he said. "These are youths who want to integrate but do not have equal access.
"They are being sent the idea that they are not French, when they are," he said.
Suburban residents said calming the violence will take more than police force, and they accused Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy of fueling tempers by calling troublemakers "scum."
"Sarkozy's language has added oil to the fire. He should really weigh his words," said Kaci, who immigrated from Algeria. "I'm proud to live in France, but this France disappoints me."
It is anarchy. This 18 year old and her family are advocating destroying the government and the law.
Do you they think they will have a gym to visit without a lawful society?
France is teetering on the brink of being destroyed from within.
A lesson for us all.
Frenchmen are allowed to own hunting rifles and shotguns, but I believe each local commune deals withn this on a stricter or looser basis.
Wonderful...the muslim woman quoted doesn't say they should be rioting, only that they should do it in another neighborhood. If the French people have any cojones at all this is going to get real ugly soon, otherwise France will cease to be French. Britain, Italy and The Netherlands are not far behind.
This is the thanks ISLAM has given France for going against the US after 9-11.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
SLAM ISLAM!!!!!
Camp of the Saints.
" Because it's not Algeria?"
Because they don't practice Sharia Law?
One cannot help but notice that in all the reports on these riots, there are no Frenchmen standing with rifles to protect their property. France has successfully disarmed its citizens, leaving them defenseless.
"They are being sent the idea that they are not French, when they are not even human," he (should have) said.
I don't believe that and I don't want any of them here.
Oh, no. Don't tell me we're going to have to go and pull the Frog's chestnuts out of the fire again.
Oh, yeah! The Lovely Miss Mariam doesn't oppose rioting, arson, and murder ... she just wants her brethren-in-thuggishness to do it somewhere else.
Almost word-for-word what South Central LA residents said during the Rodney King riots - not that they shouldn't have happened, but that they should have happened in Beverly Hills and Brentwood.
How long before the media calls these pukes for what they are, Muslim Terrorists?
bump
"France is teetering on the brink of being destroyed from within."
on the brink of physical destruction.
The moral destruction of France is complete.
The US is on the brink of moral destruction but it is not yet accomplished, thank God!
"It is saddening," said Farah's father, Mohammed Fawzi Kaci, 47, proudly showing a picture on his mobile phone of his shy daughter wearing tights and performing a split. "Where is she going to practice now?"
The local mosque?
"This is the thanks ISLAM has given France for going against the US after 9-11."
You know how it is. All the bully wants is "a little more than he had yesterday."
Every day.
Nope.
I don't believe it either ... I see plenty of immigrants of various sorts around here (NoVa). The mohammedans are even more hostile and opposed to American culture than the illegals from "south of the border".
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