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Eyewitness to Paris riots charges police with deliberate provocation
Rioting in Paris suburbs and other urban areas in France entered its second week Friday, as impoverished and angry youth continued to battle police. The fighting has extended to the eastern city of Dijon and the southern port city of Marseilles.
As France’s political elite vacillated between empty promises of “action” on unemployment and threats of even more severe repression, a document published on the Internet by the anti-racist site Les mots sont importants (lmsi.net—Words are Important) provides an eyewitness account of police provocation on the Chêne-Pointu housing estate. That estate, in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb northeast of Paris, was home to the two youths whose electrocution while fleeing police October 27 set off the current wave of unrest.
The Web document alleges that a massive police operation was deliberately designed to exacerbate the conflict with the youth on the estate after initial riots following the deaths of the two teenagers had subsided.
The author of the account, Antoine Germa, a geography and history teacher, prefaces his account by saying, “I have been on several visits to Clichy-sous-Bois since Saturday morning to prepare a series of programmes with a France Inter radio journalist on the situation in Clichy-sous-Bois. The town has been in turmoil since Thursday 27 October.... This is what I saw, heard, understood and was told.”
He finds implausible, in the first place, the denial, by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s right-wing minister of the interior, that police were chasing the youth. “Why [would the youths] go into that alley and climb a fence to hide in an EDF [state electricity company] transformer when their estate was close by?” he asks.
That night and the following night saw fierce rioting and battles with the heavily equipped CRS riot police.
However, on October 30, the day of a silent march in commemoration of the tragic deaths of Zyad Benna and Bouna Traore, mobilised by Muslim groups and the local mosque, “everything seemed calm throughout the day and the forces of the law kept out of sight.”
German continues: “On Saturday night, at the end of the fast [of Ramadan], at about 6:30 p.m., 400 CRS and gendarmes came...in cohorts like the Roman legions, at a run, visors down, shields on their arms and rubber and plastic bullet guns in their hands, they went through each street against an invisible enemy. At this time, everyone is eating and nobody is outside. Why this demonstration of force when the streets were particularly calm? ‘Police provocation,’ reply as one the local people.”
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n05.shtml
The Web document alleges that a massive police operation was deliberately designed to exacerbate the conflict with the youth on the estate after initial riots following the deaths of the two teenagers had subsided.
The author of the account, Antoine Germa, a geography and history teacher, prefaces his account by saying, “I have been on several visits to Clichy-sous-Bois since Saturday morning to prepare a series of programmes with a France Inter radio journalist on the situation in Clichy-sous-Bois. The town has been in turmoil since Thursday 27 October.... This is what I saw, heard, understood and was told.”
He finds implausible, in the first place, the denial, by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s right-wing minister of the interior, that police were chasing the youth. “Why [would the youths] go into that alley and climb a fence to hide in an EDF [state electricity company] transformer when their estate was close by?” he asks.
That night and the following night saw fierce rioting and battles with the heavily equipped CRS riot police.
However, on October 30, the day of a silent march in commemoration of the tragic deaths of Zyad Benna and Bouna Traore, mobilised by Muslim groups and the local mosque, “everything seemed calm throughout the day and the forces of the law kept out of sight.”
German continues: “On Saturday night, at the end of the fast [of Ramadan], at about 6:30 p.m., 400 CRS and gendarmes came...in cohorts like the Roman legions, at a run, visors down, shields on their arms and rubber and plastic bullet guns in their hands, they went through each street against an invisible enemy. At this time, everyone is eating and nobody is outside. Why this demonstration of force when the streets were particularly calm? ‘Police provocation,’ reply as one the local people.”
Read More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/fran-n05.shtml
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Bands of youths have torched more than 350 cars and burned warehouses and a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that fanned out from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France, police said.
The authorities appealed for calm in the face of the streak of urban unrest in France.
Troublemakers on Friday night fired bullets into a vandalised bus, set a warehouse ablaze, burned 44 cars in a car park in Suresnes, just west of Paris, and stoned rescuers helping someone who had fallen ill and torched the ambulance, police said.
Incidents, mainly fires, were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere - the second night that the unrest spread beyond metropolitan Paris.
Arrests
An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.
Police who clashed with the youth
arrested about 170 rioters
"This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?" said Naima Mouis, 43, a hospital worker in Suresnes looking at the hulk of her burned-out car.
An Interior Ministry operations centre tracking the destruction reported 355 vehicles burned around France - one-third outside the Paris region.
The figure - not definitive - marked a drop from the more than 500 vehicles set ablaze 24 hours earlier. The authorities arrested more than 200 people overnight - an unprecedented sweep since the unrest began.
A full picture of the night's violence was not expected until later on Saturday.
Mayors meet
Officials in the Yvelines region, west of Paris, said 60 vehicles were torched and a nursery school was all but burned to the ground.
About 30 mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest began on 27 October met on Friday to issue a joint appeal for calm.
Claude Pernes, mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a "veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection".
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin oversaw a Cabinet meeting on Saturday to evaluate the situation.
Protest
On Saturday morning, more than 1000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. One banner read: "No to violence."
Car torchings have become a daily fact in France's tough suburbs, with about 100 each night.
The Interior Ministry operations centre reported 754 vehicles burned throughout France from Friday night to Saturday morning, with three quarters of them in the Paris
Discontent
The violence - sparked after the 27 October accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis - has laid bare discontent simmering in France's poor suburbs ringing big cities.
Those areas are home to large populations of African immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.
A police officer at the operations centre said bullets were fired into a vandalised bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
Two days ago, bullets were fired four times, signalling a potentially dangerous turn of events. The officer, not authorised to speak publicly, asked not to be named.
The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.
An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence.
The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set alight after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.
Late on Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the Interior Ministry officer said.
Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris.
"I'm not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out," said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near the warehouse.
"I have three children and I live in a five-storey building. If a fire hit, what would I do?"
State symbols targeted
A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the riot-hit suburbs.
He said, however, that neighbourhood youths were communicating among themselves using mobile phone text messaging or emails to arrange meeting points and alert one another to police.
More than 1200 vehicles have been torched since the unrest began, LCI television reported.
Vandals have set fire to schools, post offices and other symbols of the state.
France's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it was concerned that foreign media coverage was exaggerating the situation.
"I don't have the feeling that foreign tourists in Paris are in any way placed in danger by these events," spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters, adding that officials were "sometimes a bit surprised" by foreign coverage.
Calls for calm
The violence has alarmed the government of President Jacques Chirac, whose calls for calm have gone unheeded.
"This is the first time [suburban violence] has lasted so long, and the government appears taken aback at the magnitude," said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Centre for Study of French Political Life.
Abderrhamane Bouhout, head of the Bilal mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the youths died, said he had enlisted 50 youngsters to roam housing projects and persuade youths to stay out of trouble.
Siyakah Traore, the brother of 15-year-old Bouna Traore who was one of the two teens electrocuted, on Friday called for protesters to "calm down and stop ransacking everything".
"This is not how we are going to have our voices heard," he said on RTL radio.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3CB45180-DE89-4803-BBA0-CEFE8C34FB2B.htm
The authorities appealed for calm in the face of the streak of urban unrest in France.
Troublemakers on Friday night fired bullets into a vandalised bus, set a warehouse ablaze, burned 44 cars in a car park in Suresnes, just west of Paris, and stoned rescuers helping someone who had fallen ill and torched the ambulance, police said.
Incidents, mainly fires, were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere - the second night that the unrest spread beyond metropolitan Paris.
Arrests
An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.
Police who clashed with the youth
arrested about 170 rioters
"This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?" said Naima Mouis, 43, a hospital worker in Suresnes looking at the hulk of her burned-out car.
An Interior Ministry operations centre tracking the destruction reported 355 vehicles burned around France - one-third outside the Paris region.
The figure - not definitive - marked a drop from the more than 500 vehicles set ablaze 24 hours earlier. The authorities arrested more than 200 people overnight - an unprecedented sweep since the unrest began.
A full picture of the night's violence was not expected until later on Saturday.
Mayors meet
Officials in the Yvelines region, west of Paris, said 60 vehicles were torched and a nursery school was all but burned to the ground.
About 30 mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest began on 27 October met on Friday to issue a joint appeal for calm.
Claude Pernes, mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a "veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection".
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin oversaw a Cabinet meeting on Saturday to evaluate the situation.
Protest
On Saturday morning, more than 1000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. One banner read: "No to violence."
Car torchings have become a daily fact in France's tough suburbs, with about 100 each night.
The Interior Ministry operations centre reported 754 vehicles burned throughout France from Friday night to Saturday morning, with three quarters of them in the Paris
Discontent
The violence - sparked after the 27 October accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis - has laid bare discontent simmering in France's poor suburbs ringing big cities.
Those areas are home to large populations of African immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.
A police officer at the operations centre said bullets were fired into a vandalised bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
Two days ago, bullets were fired four times, signalling a potentially dangerous turn of events. The officer, not authorised to speak publicly, asked not to be named.
The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.
An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence.
The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set alight after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.
Late on Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the Interior Ministry officer said.
Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris.
"I'm not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out," said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near the warehouse.
"I have three children and I live in a five-storey building. If a fire hit, what would I do?"
State symbols targeted
A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the riot-hit suburbs.
He said, however, that neighbourhood youths were communicating among themselves using mobile phone text messaging or emails to arrange meeting points and alert one another to police.
More than 1200 vehicles have been torched since the unrest began, LCI television reported.
Vandals have set fire to schools, post offices and other symbols of the state.
France's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it was concerned that foreign media coverage was exaggerating the situation.
"I don't have the feeling that foreign tourists in Paris are in any way placed in danger by these events," spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters, adding that officials were "sometimes a bit surprised" by foreign coverage.
Calls for calm
The violence has alarmed the government of President Jacques Chirac, whose calls for calm have gone unheeded.
"This is the first time [suburban violence] has lasted so long, and the government appears taken aback at the magnitude," said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Centre for Study of French Political Life.
Abderrhamane Bouhout, head of the Bilal mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the youths died, said he had enlisted 50 youngsters to roam housing projects and persuade youths to stay out of trouble.
Siyakah Traore, the brother of 15-year-old Bouna Traore who was one of the two teens electrocuted, on Friday called for protesters to "calm down and stop ransacking everything".
"This is not how we are going to have our voices heard," he said on RTL radio.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3CB45180-DE89-4803-BBA0-CEFE8C34FB2B.htm
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