Going to France from South Africa, soon?
Sabsy
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. Bus drivers have been
striking sporadically for weeks to protest nighttime aggression against them
by young riders, including being spat upon, kicked and hit with baseball
bats.
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.
Although French newspapers and television networks usually do not say so,
the majority of the perpetrators are of Arab and North African extraction,
residents of the grim and hopeless housing complexes that ring Paris and
many other major French cities.
Young members of these communities, overwhelmingly jobless despite their
level of education, believe they have little chance of integrating into
French society, an expert said.
"There is a real problem of marginalization by race," said Antoine Garapon,
a judge who heads a think tank on judicial issues called the Institute for
Advanced Studies of Justice.
"Young people from these communities . . . are in the despair of the
suburbs, and they know they have no chance of getting out."
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."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
BB
[But] these youngsters do not kill, they just burn objects."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
(Our man Sabsy referring to the recent Strasbourg disturbances over New
Years)
-Equate this to your pokes at the status of other countries citizen safety.
You shoot yourself in the foot, when our situation is distinctly
bloodier!!!