New Year's Riots In France

[Arm The Spirit]

New Year Riots In France

Firemen Were Attacked By Rioters When They Tried To Put Out The
Flames

(BBC News) - Youths in the French city of Strasbourg - home
of the European Parliament - greeted the New Year with riots in
which more than 50 cars were gutted and two policemen injured.
Disaffected youths went on the rampage in underprivileged
suburbs of the city, which is close to the German border, on
Wednesday night. Home made bombs went off in a gymnasium, a
cultural centre, and a primary school, causing damage estimated
at up to 300,000 francs ($50,000), despite the presence of some
400 police and 200 firemen, some of whom were attacked as they
tried to put out the flames.
Local prefect Patrice Magnier said it was the worse violence
in the city since 1974. The rioters smashed 21 telephone kiosks
and 32 bus shelters and destroyed 53 cars and vans. Twelve
people, all between 13 and 20 years old, were arrested and taken
into custody for questioning in.
Departmental director for public safety, Jean-Luc Faivre,
said two police officers were slightly injured during the night
but there were no violent confrontations between the police and
young people. But one firefighter said young people had thrown
stones and firecrackers at emergency workers.
There were also scattered incidents of violence in the Paris
suburbs of Yvelines and Saint Denis during New Year celebrations.
French President Jacques Chirac, in his annual New Year
message, denounced growing violence in France and urged people to
help the police control the problem. He said: "There is too much
violence in our country, too much insecurity - in the
schools, on public transport. Every day new limits are broken
beyond which our society will disintegrate."

France Watches Warily As Violent Protests Mount

Unemployment, Racial Issues Prompt Disorder

By Anne Swardson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 3, 1998; Page A15

PARIS, Jan. 2 - A spate of violent incidents in France in
the last few weeks, including the burning of 62 cars by about 300
young people in Strasbourg during the last two nights, has given
rise to fears that the country may be on the verge of another
outburst of strikes and riots.
Two young men were killed by police in different cities late
last month, prompting car burnings and other street protests.
[...] Several hundred unemployed workers and their supporters are
occupying 13 unemployment offices, demanding year-end bonuses.
In addition to the vandalism in Strasbourg, 59 cars were
burned in the suburbs of Paris on New Year's Eve, according to
newspaper reports.
The incidents may be random. But such violence nearly always
raises concerns in France, a country known since 1789 for
explosions of public anger that can overthrow governments,
reverse policies and bring new faces to power. Last year, only a
handful of violent events marked New Year's. [...] Just before
Christmas, Abdelkhader Bouziane, 16, was shot and killed by
police in a Paris suburb as he and a friend fled in a small car.
The next day, Fabrice Fernandez, 24, was killed by a local
policeman during an interrogation at police headquarters in Lyon.
After each killing, young people stormed the streets and, in
the Paris suburb, burned a new local library.
Restiveness is on display in other corners of French society
as well, particularly among the unemployed. For three weeks,
several hundred jobless people and their allies have occupied
local unemployment bureaus, particularly in the Marseille area,
to demand a year-end bonus of about $500 in their benefits. They
are supported by some of France's unions.
They also are supported by France's Communist Party, which
operates in an informal governing alliance with Socialist Prime
Minister Lionel Jospin. Party chief Robert Hue called the demand
by the unemployed for a bonus "legitimate" and said the
government "should respond positively without delay".
The unemployment fund is managed jointly by the unions and
the French association of businesses, so the decision is not up
to the government. However, if Jospin fails to ease unemployment
and poverty, it will work against him politically.
More than 3 million people are unemployed in France, with an
unemployment rate of 12.4 percent, and a third have been jobless
for more than a year. Youth unemployment is especially severe,
reaching as high as 30 percent in some parts of France.
Unemployment "is the blind spot of governmental action,"
Laurent Joffrin wrote in Liberation newspaper this week. "The
Jospin team has negotiated without mishap all obstacles but one:
the extreme disenfranchisement that continues to gnaw at French
society."
A day of national strikes and demonstrations in favor of the
unemployed occupiers has been called for next week. Polls show
more than 60 percent of the French favor their cause.
Angry demonstrations are a French tradition. President
Jacques Chirac won office in 1995 in part by promising to heal
the "social fracture," as he referred to the alienation of many
French from their government and country.
But less than a year after he gained office, the country was
rent by transport strikes that brought Paris to a halt. By last
spring, the center-right Chirac had been weakened by the election
of a Socialist government.
Now it is Jospin's turn to deal with these outbursts of
violence and protest. He has said little about the car burnings
and the bonus demands, although Labor Ministry officials point
out that he has increased aid for those unemployed the longest
and plans to propose reforms for France's vast welfare system
this spring. In addition, his government has proposed new
measures on youth crime and delinquency.
Car burning in particular seems to have become a popular
form of expression. In the Strasbourg area, some 500 cars were
torched in 1997, up from 400 the previous year. Other cities were
not so hard-hit but have had increases.
"Burning cars has become a kind of ritual," said scholar
Farhad Khosrokhavar, who studies young Muslims in the suburbs.
"Through this violence, [young people] feel involved in society.
They feel like stars. It looks very spectacular. It gives them a
feeling of powerfulness. [But] these youngsters do not kill, they
just burn objects."