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Guitta: Paris When It Sizzles

Nov 5, 2005 8:30 am By Robert Spencer

A useful analysis of the France riots from Olivier Guitta in the Weekly Standard (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater):

THE FRENCH USE THE EUPHEMISM “quartiers sensibles”–sensitive neighborhoods–for the troubled, predominantly Arab and African working-class suburbs of Paris and other cities that increasingly resemble a ticking bomb at the heart of their society.

One such sensitive neighborhood is Clichy-sous-Bois, nine miles northeast of Paris, where last week’s string of nightly riots began. Two Muslim youths–one black, one Arab–were electrocuted at a power relay station on October 27. The circumstances are sketchy: Were the youths being chased by the police because they were suspects in a break-in? Were they being chased for no reason? Or were they–as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy claims, and the preliminary report of the prosecutor has now confirmed–never pursued by the police at all?

For the time being, what is certain is that the rumor that innocent youths had died as a result of police harassment spread like wildfire. Local residents called their friends in other neighborhoods and urged them to join the upcoming fight against the state. In fact, the first people attacked by the mob were the firemen who went to the power relay station to rescue the youths. The firemen, greeted by a barrage of stones, could not treat the victims on the spot but retreated to their trucks and drove the youths to a nearby trauma center.

Later, some 400 young men started trashing the town, burning cars, vandalizing a school, a mall, the post office, the fire station, bus shelters. They even tried to enter the town hall but were prevented by police. Fighting broke out when 300 antiriot forces entered Clichy and were met with Molotov cocktails and stones and even a live gunshot.

Seven cops were injured, and witnesses described the scene as “guerrilla warfare.” Philosopher Jean-François Mattei spoke of “urban barbarity.” In the eight nights of rioting that, at this writing, have ensued, in Clichy-sous-Bois and other Paris suburbs, about 1,224 cars were burned and numerous youths arrested. Three journalists from French TV had to abandon their car after they were threatened by the mob, which proceeded to torch the car along with an auto dealership, a preschool, and a gym. Another four gunshots were fired at cops and firemen, and two commuter trains were attacked.

One police-union leader, writing to Interior Minister Sarkozy, declared, “A civil war is unfolding in Clichy-sous-Bois. We cannot handle the challenge any longer. Only the Army, trained and equipped for this type of mission, can intervene to stabilize the situation.”

Yet despite all the national and international headlines they occasioned, last week’s disturbances were no freak occurrence. For at least 15 years, the immigrant and first-generation suburbs around France’s large and medium-sized cities have been out of control. Crime rates have gone through the roof: According to the Renseignements Généraux, a division of the police, 70,000 violent crimes have been recorded in urban settings since the beginning of the year. They include the torching of more than 28,000 cars and 17,500 trash bins. According to the Interior Ministry, some 9,000 police cars have been stoned by youths this year.

And property is not the only target. On October 27, the day the two died in Clichy-sous-Bois, three young thugs in another Paris suburb savagely killed a 56-year-old Frenchman who was photographing a lamppost. Plenty of witnesses were around, but none came forward to testify. The attackers were trying either to steal the man’s digital camera or to “protect their turf” from an intruder. Ten days earlier, in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of France’s second largest city, Lyon, the police chased two teenagers on a stolen scooter and one fell and hurt his ankle. The rumor spread that he was in a coma because of the cops. A few nights of rioting ensued, with violent faceoffs between teens and police on the exact spot where similar, serious rioting occurred 15 years ago.

Read it all.

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