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NEWS & LETTERS, November-December 2005Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryParisian revolt spreads through West Europe[caption] Hundreds took part in a silent march through a suburb of Paris in memory of the two teenagers whose deaths as police chased them sparked a national revolt. * * * As we went to press, the anti-police, anti-government rebellion in France had gone on for more than two weeks, beginning in late October. It broke out in Clichy-sous-bois, a small and impoverished enclave populated mainly by North African immigrants and their descendants. The spark was the deaths of two youths, one of them only 15 and the other 17, who were electrocuted when they entered a power sub-station. They were apparently fleeing police. By the second week, the unrest had not only engulfed the Paris suburbs, but also reached into Paris and numerous cities across France. It then spread into several cities in Belguim and Germany. Over 7,000 automobiles were set afire--long a popular tactic of alienated youth. Police also came under attack, as did firefighters. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy fanned the flames with his provocative comments about the need to clean up "scum," which was widely interpreted as the racist demonization of an entire community. But it played well with the French Right, as he maneuvered to run for president in the next elections. The anger of North African youth has been simmering for decades. In most of their communities, unemployment stands at 30%, three times the national average. These communities now constitute over 10% of the population, locked into patterns of job and housing discrimination. They also face rampant police brutality and harassment. "We just want to be recognized as human beings," one young woman told the BBC. The French political establishment, including the big leftist parties and trade unions, has very little contact with these communities. Nor does the student movement. The grievances of these ghetto communities were not really represented during the Oct. 4 strike against government economic policies, which involved nearly a million people, except at the very general level of attacking the high rate of unemployment. The government has fought back by resorting to a highly controversial emergency decree, first passed into law in 1955 during France's colonial war against the Algerian independence movement, that permits the imposition of local curfews. The government did not impose such a measure even at the height of the massive student and worker unrest in May 1968. Such measures will do little or nothing to address the real source of this mass upsurge against discrimination. |
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