Paris-Area Riots Gain Dangerous Momentum (Eighth Night)

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 11-4-2005 | Jamey Keaten

[blam]

Paris-Area Riots Gain Dangerous Momentum

Friday November 4, 2005 3:46 AM

By JAMEY KEATEN

Associated Press Writer

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France (AP) - A week of riots in poor neighborhoods outside Paris gained dangerous new momentum Thursday, with youths shooting at police and firefighters and attacking trains and symbols of the French state.

Facing mounting criticism, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed to restore order as the violence that erupted Oct. 27 spread to at least 20 towns, highlighting the frustration simmering in housing projects that are home to many North African immigrants.

Unrest flared for an eighth straight night Thursday, though scaled down from previous says. Young men fire buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, while a group of 30 to 40 harassed police near a synagogue further east in Stains, said the top official of Seine-Saint-Denis, Prefect Jean-Francois Cordet.

A special Interior Ministry operations center monitoring the violence said some 60 vehicles torched in the Seine-Saint-Denis region by early Friday and a total of 165 throughout the Paris metropolitan area. Some 40 vehicles were torched in the Val d'Oise area northwest of Paris.

The sporadic incidents were less intense that the ferocious rioting that erupted eight days ago in Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the troubled area of housing projects marked by soaring unemployment, delinquency and a sense of despair.

``I will not accept organized gangs making the law in some neighborhoods. I will not accept having crime networks and drug trafficking profiting from disorder,'' Villepin said at the Senate in between emergency meetings called over the riots.

The unrest cast a cloud over the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. In Clichy-sous-Bois - heart of the rioting - men filled the Bilal mosque for evening prayers, but streets were subdued with shops shutting early.

``Look around you. How do you think we can celebrate?'' said Abdallah Hammo as he closed the tea house where he works.

Riots erupted in an outburst of anger in Clichy-sous-Bois over the accidental electrocution Oct. 27 of two teenagers who fled a soccer game and hid in a power substation when they saw police enter the area. Youths in the neighborhood suspect that police chased Traore Bouna, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, to their deaths.

Since then riots have swelled into a broader challenge against the French state and its security forces. The violence has exposed deep discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.

The Interior Ministry released a preliminary report Thursday exonerating officers of any direct role in the teenagers' deaths. Some 1,300 officers were being deployed in Seine-Saint-Denis, a tough northeastern area that includes the town of Clichy-sous-Bois and has seen the worst violence.

The report said police went to Clichy-sous-Bois to investigate a suspected intrusion on a building site but did not chase the teenagers who were killed. A third teenager who was seriously injured also told investigators he and the other boys were aware of the dangers when they hid in the substation, which was fenced off, the report said.

The report did not address why the youths ran when officers came to the neighborhood, but it said Benna was known to police for having committed robbery with violence and Bouna was among those who had intruded onto the building site.

His father, Amor Benna, told The Associated Press that he and the other teenagers' families have filed a legal complaint to try to determine whether ``a mistake was made by security forces. We want to know the circumstances that led to his death.''

Official assurances that police were not directly responsible for the deaths have not stemmed the unrest, which authorities said spread Wednesday night to at least 20 Paris-region towns. Government offices, a police station, a primary school and a college, a Clichy-sous-Bois fire station and a train station were among the buildings targeted.

Rioters also set fire to a gym near the Les Tilleuls housing complex in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. It burned and smoldered Wednesday night as residents looked on in despair.

``Where is she going to practice now?'' asked Mohammed Fawzi Kaci, an Algerian immigrant whose 8-year-old daughter took gymnastics classes at the facility.

The violence also has cast doubt on the success of France's model of seeking to integrate its immigrant community - its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest - by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children often complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.

``It is very tough when you are stuck midway between France and Algeria or Morocco,'' said Sonia Imloul, who works with troubled teens in Seine-Saint-Denis and was born in France of Algerian parents. She added: ``Perhaps we should be told clearly to stop having children, because they have an 80 percent chance of not succeeding.''

On Thursday, rioters fired four shots at police and firefighters but caused no injuries, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for Seine-Saint-Denis. Nine people were injured in other unrest and 315 cars were torched across the Paris area, officials said.

Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains. A passenger was slightly injured by broken glass.

Police have made 143 arrests during the unrest, Interior Ministry Nicolas Sarkozy said.

Residents and opposition politicians have accused Sarkozy of fanning tensions with his tough police tactics and talk - including calling troublemakers ``scum.''

``Sarkozy's language has added oil to the fire. He should really weigh his words,'' said Kaci, whose daughter lost her gym. ``I'm proud to live in France, but this France disappoints me.''

---

Associated Press writers John Leicester, Scheherezade Faramarzi, Joelle Diderich and Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.

[garyhope]

Frenchmen and women and their lovely Moslem brothers and sisters.

[Flavius]

yes cnn cant find a cameraman, they are all busy throwing rocks probably

[MinuteGal]

Hahahahah......the French made the decision not to fight the Islamis in Iraq.

The Islamis in Paris took note.

Now the French have to fight the Islamis in their own streets.

Les coqs have come home to roost.

Leni

[Cplus]

The End of Zeropean History

Francis Fukuyama looks at Europe and doesn't like what he sees.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007491

[DCPatriot]

Your #29 is a good point.

Probably a blackout of sorts because it's worse than reported.

[Liberal Bob]

Chirac’s Islamic Parissites?

[ChadGore]

Burned cars in Baghdad today = 1

Burned cars in Paris today = 80

We've won the War On Terror.

[Dick Bachert]

This is what the frogs get for allowing their FORMER country to become 25% muslim.

These people are practicing what the social scientists call "adversarial assimilation." Enter a foreign culture, bring children into the world, inculcate them with deep hatred for that culture while going through the motions of accepting, even embracing, it.

If the insane PC/diversity crap keeps going HERE and Bush continues calling Islam "a religion of peace," it will eventually make what's going on in France look like a warm-up exercise.

[Main Street]

Time to send in Sgt.Markoff of the French Foreign Legion. He'll fix it.

If the French could get past their PC brainwashing, and were serious about putting a stop to the riots, all they would have to do is declare Martial Law, and shoot to kill anyone on the streets. Period. Then cut off all social(ist) aid to foreign nationals to clear the country of slackers, those who want to pull their own weight can stay. The rest are out of there.

But alas, they value the "joys of multiculturalism" more then the survival of their own country. So expect bending over backwards and total appeasement.

I hope at least the rest of Europe will learn a lesson from this.

[marktwain]

Socialist liberals seem to breed this final state of despair amoung various type peoples.

Paying people to breed without requiring any real responsibility or work from them does seem to result in this kind of antisocial behavior after a generation.

[singfreedom]

The HUGE gap occurs because of education, or the lack thereof. Most of the Middle Easterners we meet here are educated. It is rather rare that the educated ones choose violence.

Personally, most of the middle east's problems occur because the population is so ignorant, thus gullible for some proselytizing mullah, spouting his own hate agenda.

[DCPatriot]

Most of the Iranians here 20 years or so escaped the Khomeini coup. I'd think they'd be last on the list of Islamofascists.

And today, many of those could qualify for the senior discount at Denny's.

It's their children, after being spoonfed extremist jihad crap in the mosques that have them rioting, but they don't want to report that.

What country was it that had a problem with girls wearing the headcovering at school? Political correctness will destroy the civilized world as we know it.

[Peter Libra]

Isn't that what the last radio station in France is playing at the end of Camp of the Saints?

Hastily thumbing through my copy published by The Social Contract Press. Petoskey, Michigan. Have to take time out.

I used Google and found Jean Raspail.net. He is alive and well- in Paris at 79 years of age. Fortunately has English translation. I wait to read what he may say about this turn of events.

No doubt fat burghers sneered, over a wine at his book- Impossibe- or whatever.

[singfreedom]

Wonderful suggestions. Thanks for the comic relief!

[blam]

"Francis Fukuyama looks at Europe and doesn't like what he sees. "

That was a very good article. Thanks.

[CheyennePress]

Anyone else think we should loan them the LAPD?

[singfreedom]

Only after Eisenhower gave DeGaulle a kick in the pants.

[singfreedom]

I was thinking they would be bending the other way---and they better not expect a kiss! (Sorry, an old Army saying I learned from my husband, but I thought it was sooooo apropos.)

[Kozak]

Thanks. I've stuck with it for a couple of years now. Looks like I'll be using it for quite awhile longer.

I am somewhat encouraged that the average person is NOT buying the PC "Religion of Peace" spin anymore.

[metmom]

I've come to the conclusion that "Allah" is really Satan's right hand man.