[extropy-chat] [selected.by.rael at rael-science.org: [rael-science] La Haine: Schools, synagogues and hundreds of cars burn. It's Paris 2005]

[Eugen Leitl]

Some background on the riots in France.

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Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 03:13:25 +0100
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Subject: [rael-science] La Haine: Schools, synagogues and hundreds of cars burn. It's
  Paris 2005
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Source: The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article325153.ece

La Haine: Schools, synagogues and hundreds of cars burn. It's Paris 2005

The 1996 hit film showed a French capital in flames as its underclass 
rioted. That was fiction. This time it's for real. Hugh Schofield reports 
from the streets of a suburb its inhabitants now call Baghdad-sur-Seine

06 November 2005

France's worst urban violence since 1968 spread this weekend, with riots in 
Toulouse, Marseille, Lille and Rouen after more than a week's unrest in the 
deprived areas around Paris. On Friday there were attacks on schools, a 
town hall and a synagogue, and more than 750 cars were burnt out. At least 
250 people were arrested.

At Aulnay-sous-Bois, one of the worst-affected towns in the eastern Paris 
suburbs, a group of five or six adolescents in baseball caps and hooded 
sweatshirts lounged last week in the parking lot of the notorious estate 
known as the City of the 3,000.

Across the dual carriageway that fronts the grim complex, a Renault garage 
lay in black cinders. Police and passers-by took photographs with their 
mobile phones. Elsewhere in the town, which is in most parts a safe and 
genteel area not far from Charles de Gaulle airport, burnt-out cars 
littered the pavement. A faint smell mixing tear gas and smoke still 
lingered in the air.

Among Abdelkarim and his friends, no one bothered to deny that they were in 
the thick of it the night before. "In the olden days this used to be a huge 
forest. It was called the For?t de Bondy. In those days there used to be 
highwaymen who cut the throats of the people in the carriages when they 
came through. That's what we are - like pirates," laughed Abdelkarim, 20.

His story was of poverty, discrimination, dreams of his ancestral homeland 
of Morocco - and also of anti-Semitism, regular consumption of hashish and 
a swaggering satisfaction with his record of car theft, prison and 
violence. "Look around you - there is nothing here. We live four to a room. 
Our parents go to work like zombies. But we have nothing. Even the jobs 
around here go to people from elsewhere. This parking lot is like our 
living room," he said.

The surroundings are indeed grim. The City of the 3,000 consists of a 
series of long low-rise buildings made of the cheapest 1970s materials and 
painted an unsavoury off-white. Patches of scrubby grass are covered in 
rubbish and upturned wheelie bins.

"The police know us all by name. But when they come they still beat down 
the door and order our parents to lie on the ground. And when they ask 
where we are from, we give our addresses, but they say: 'You're not from 
here. You're from Africa,'" he said.

Though he modestly declined the appellation, Abdelkarim is the local "caid" 
- the Arabic word means leader - and he happily boasted of the ?2,000 which 
he makes from each car stolen. "You want prostitutes, DVD players, 
jewellery? I can get anything you want," he said.

One of his friends, Karim, aged 15, pulled back his sleeves to reveal gold 
bracelets and then opened his shirt to show a gold chain. Both nicked, he 
winked. Another boy held a mobile phone. "Come and look," he gestured, 
laughing. It was a short film of a Chechen guerrilla cutting off the head 
of a Russian soldier.

These are the people who since 27 October have had the French government 
running scared. Their grievances - racism, poverty, lack of jobs - have 
changed little since the first disturbances in the banlieues broke out more 
than 15 years ago, later portrayed in the 1996 film La Haine (Hatred).

But where before protesters demanded financial aid and change within the 
system, many of today's rioters seem motivated more by a nihilistic 
rejection of all that surrounds them. "I hate France, and the French hate 
us," said Abdelkarim. "The wicked get punished. See what happened after the 
Americans made war on Iraq? Allah sent the hurricane. We are getting our 
revenge."

For President Jacques Chirac - and his uneasy cabinet tandem of Prime 
Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - this 
stark aggression is proof of the colossal failure of past policies to 
integrate France's five million-strong Arab minority. Successive 
governments have invoked the mantra of republican equality to block special 
measures to favour immigrants, arguing that the country's system of 
integration would work in time.

But in practice Arabs continue to suffer from widespread discrimination in 
employment and housing. Unofficial statistics - there are no official ones 
- show that a hugely disproportionate number of young Arab males are in 
prison or out of work. Alienation has been fed by the almost total absence 
of Muslim or African leaders in politics and the media. While Britain has 
dozens of MPs and other public figures of African or Asian origin, France 
has virtually none.

Meanwhile, there is the constant affront of being obliged to live in the 
bleak out-of-town estates that have become synonymous with deprivation and 
violence. Even before this latest wave of rioting, some 28,000 cars were 
burnt in small-scale riots in France in the first 10 months of the year. 
"From my window I can see the Eiffel Tower," said Abdelkarim. "But Paris is 
another world. This is Baghdad."

Britain has had a different experience of immigration. Communities have 
been encouraged to maintain their identities - anathema in France - and 
moved into the inner parts of the main towns and cities. There is poverty, 
but employment. In Birmingham two weeks ago the riots were between two 
groups competing for space. In France the target is different: wealth, 
authority, the nation.

Benyahya Makhlouf, a 53-year-old taxi driver who emigrated from Algeria 20 
years ago, said that he sympathises with the protesters. "They packed them 
into these estates and it was like living in a cage. Of course they were 
going to explode," he said. "The children just give up."

But Mr Makhlouf also supported the hardline policing ideas of Mr Sarkozy. 
"How am I supposed to inculcate the work ethic in my son, when his friends 
have Nikes given to them by their drug-dealer fathers? At least Sarkozy 
wants to restore order."

The name evokes different emotions among the rioters. "Ever since Sarko 
came into the government, life has been merde," said Kamel, 16. "He treats 
us like dogs - well, we'll show him how dogs can react." On this point, he 
and the outspoken minister, who talks of "cleaning out" the "racaille" 
(riff-raff), are speaking the same language. He sees the riots as a clear 
attempt by the caids to take back control, and is determined to stop them.

PAST PROTESTS

 From the storming of the Bastille, the image of Paris has been inseparable 
from that of revolution. Sanctified in the words of the 'Marseillaise', 
this reverence for the revolutionary spirit has lent a degree of legitimacy 
to violent protests.

1789 Mother of revolutions. The Paris mob - the sans-culottes of legend - 
overthrow the monarchy. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are guillotined

1830 The Bourbons, restored after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, are driven out 
as Paris rises up, sending Charles X into exile

1848 Amid unrest across Europe, a small riot in Paris causes the 
constitutional monarch Louis Philippe to flee

1871 After France's defeat by Prussia on the battlefield, riots break out 
again in Paris, giving birth to the revolutionary but short-lived Paris Commune

1968 Students pull up the Latin Quarter's cobblestones in revolt against 
Charles de Gaulle's rule. Workers go on strike too, weakening the 
government fatally

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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