On November 4, riots continued for the ninth consecutive night as young people, many with African and Arab backgrounds, set fire to cars and buildings in Paris's poor, migrant-populated suburbs.
The riots were sparked on October 27 when two teenagers of African origin were accidentally electrocuted as they fled police. Anger at these deaths boiled over among young people fed up with unemployment, poverty, run-down public housing and police harassment.
Reuters reported on November 4 that unrest had spread to areas outside Paris, including to Rouen in the north, Dijon in the east and Marseille in France's south. Hundreds of people have been detained.
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy responded to the violence with a "zero tolerance" approach, installing a massive police presence in the area. He has inflamed tensions by calling rioters "scum" and declaring his intention to "clean out" the troubled suburbs.
The London Guardian reported on November 1 that Sarkozy, a leading presidential candidate for the 2007 election, "said 17 companies of CRS riot police would be assigned permanently to difficult neighbourhoods, along with seven mobile police squads. Plainclothes agents will be sent on to some estates to 'identify gang leaders, traffickers and big shots', he added, promising a 'national plan' to deal with delinquency by the end of the year."
Police have fired tear gas cannisters and rubber bullets at the youths and there have been many accusations of police provocation and harassment. On November 3, Reuters reported one black youth as saying: "It's because of the police that this is going on ... They are too violent. That's not what their job is."
On November 1, Dominique Sopo, the president of anti-racism group SOS-Racism, called for a massive investment plan to redress poverty and discrimination in Paris's suburbs. According to the November 4 San Francisco Chronicle, Sopo said: "This isn't a question of failed integration, since many of these youths are second- and third-generation immigrants — they're French.
"But this situation reflects endemic discrimination — in jobs, in housing, in education — that exists against French of immigrant origin."
The Chronicle also quoted the mayor of the riot-hit Parisian suburb of Sevran, Stephane Gatignon, who pointed out that the suburb has an unemployment rate of nearly 19% (almost twice the national average). More than 30% of those under 25 are unemployed, which "ranks with underdeveloped nations".
According to the Chronicle, Tricy Itashi, a high school student from the Democratic Republic of Congo who knows some of the rioters, said: "As a black and a foreigner, you don't have many choices."
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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