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2005 French riots

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The 2005 Paris suburb riots are an ongoing series of riots primarily focused near Paris which have continued for nine consecutive nights beginning on Thursday, October 27 2005 [1], with violent clashes occurring between hundreds of immigrant youths and the French Police. They were triggered by the deaths of two teenagers of African origin in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor commune in an eastern banlieue (suburb) of Paris, and then spread to other parts of Seine-Saint-Denis. Additional violence has now spread to other areas of France (Seine-et-Marne, Val-d'Oise, Suresnes, Lille, Arras, Calais, Rouen, Dijon, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Rennes, Nantes, Nice, Bordeaux, Pau, and Toulouse [2][3][4][5]). According to police estimates, over 1,260 vehicles had been torched as of Saturday morning, with 1,300 firemen dispatched to Seine-Saint-Denis, and more than 200 people arrested, ranking the riots as the worst seen since 1968 student revolt [6].

Areas of rioting as of 4 November.
Départements affected by rioting as of 5 November (most of them sporadic)

Immediate cause

The riots were ignited when two teenagers living in Clichy-sous-Bois, Ziad Benna (17) and Banou Traoré (15), were electrocuted after they came into contact with a transformer in an electrical relay substation. The two were allegedly playing football, when police officers wanted to check their IDs. The youngsters ran away and climbed into the relay substation to hide. Police maintain that any involvement on their behalf ended 22 minutes prior to the accident. A third youth, a 21-year-old male, was also injured but survived. Rioting subsequently broke out after it was reported that the teenagers who died belonged to ethnic minorities in a low-income district.

There is controversy over whether or not the teens were actually chased. The local prosecutor, François Molins, has said they believed so, but the police were actually after other suspects attempting to avoid an identity check [7]. Molins and the French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy maintain that the dead teenagers had not been "physically pursued" by the police. This is disputed by some: The Australian reports that "Despite denials by police officials and Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. de Villepin, friends of the boys said they were being pursued by police after a false accusation of burglary and that they 'feared interrogation'" [8]. An official investigation is still under way.

The deaths appear to have aggravated pre-existing tensions. Protesters told the Associated Press the unrest was an expression of frustration with unemployment and police harassment in the areas. One protester said, "People are joining together to say we've had enough," and continued, "We live in ghettos. Everyone lives in fear." [9][10] The rioting suburbs are also home to a large North African immigrant population, adding ethnic and religious tensions which many believe contribute further to such frustrations. For further discussion on the background of the conflicts, see below.

Timeline

File:2005 Paris suburb riots.jpg
Youths and riot police face off in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on October 29, 2005.
  • Thursday October 27 - Rioting first began in the evening, after the deaths of Ziad Benna and Banou Traoré, whose deaths were witnessed by at least one friend. Gangs, mostly consisting of hundreds of youths, clashed with police, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police forces and firefighters, setting cars on fire, and vandalizing buildings. A shot was reportedly fired at police. [11] Police responded by firing tear gas at the rioters. About 27 people were detained. 23 police officers and 1 journalist were wounded. The number of rioters injured is not known. [12]
  • Friday October 28 - Rioting continued.
  • Saturday, October 29 - About 500 people took part in a silent march through Clichy-sous-Bois, in memory of the teenagers. [13] Representatives of the Muslim community appealed for calm and dignity at the procession. Marchers wore t-shirts printed with the message mort pour rien "dead for nothing". [14]
  • Sunday, October 30 - A tear gas grenade was launched into a mosque. Police denied responsibility but acknowledged that it was the same type used by French riot police. Speaking to 170 police officers at Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture in Bobigny (the local authority overseeing Clichy-sous-Bois), Nicolas Sarkozy said, "I am, of course, available to the Imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque."
  • Monday, October 31 - It was reported that the rioting had spread to Seine-Saint-Denis. In nearby Montfermeil, the municipal police garage was set on fire. Michel Thooris, an official of police trade union Action Police CFTC, described the unrest as a "civil war" and called on the French Army to intervene. [15]
  • Tuesday, November 1 - It was reported that rioting had spread to nine other suburbs, across which 69 vehicles were torched. A total of 150 arson attacks on garbage cans, vehicles and buildings were reported. The unrest was particularly intense in Sevran, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bondy, all in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, which is considered to be a "sensitive area of immigration and modest incomes." In Sevran, youths set fire to two rooms of a primary school, along with several cars. Three officers were slightly injured. [16] In Aulnay-sous-Bois, rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the town hall and rocks at the firehouse; police fired rubber bullets at advancing rioters. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met with the families of Ziad Benna, Banou Traoré, and the third male who was also hiding in the electrical substation. The Prime Minister expressed the "need to restore calm." [17]
  • Wednesday November 2 - Reports suggest rioters briefly stormed a police station while 177 vehicles were torched. One government official claims that live rounds were fired at riot police. Two primary schools, a post office and a shopping centre were damaged and a large car showroom set ablaze. Police vans and cars were stoned as gangs turned on police. Rioting has now spread west-ward to the area of Hauts-de-Seine where a police station was bombarded with home-made Molotov cocktails. Jacques Chirac, the President of France, made appeals for calm, and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held an emergency cabinet meeting. De Villepin issued a statement saying "Let's avoid stigmatising areas", an apparent rebuke to his political rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called the rioters "scum" (racaille). [18] [19] [20]
  • Thursday November 3 - Traffic was halted on the RER B suburban commuter line which links Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after unions called for a strike. Rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station, forced a conductor from one train and broke windows, the SNCF rail authority said. A passenger was lightly injured by broken glass. [21] For the first time the riots spread outside of Paris, spreading to Dijon with sporadic violence in Bouches-du-Rhone in the south and Rouen in the west of France. In Parliament, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin pledged again to restore order as his government has come under criticism for their failures in preventing the violence. Around one hundred Firemen were called to put out a blaze at a carpet factory while twenty-seven buses were set alight also. On the night of 3 November, 500 cars were torched and arson occurred in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Neuilly-sur-Marne, Le Blanc Mesnil, and Yvelines.[22][23][24][25] [26]. Additionally, seven cars were burned in Paris [27], and others had their windows broken out near the metro station La Chapelle.
  • Friday November 4 - On Friday night, violence continued in Val d'Oise, Seine-et-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis. Arson and attacks on vehicles occurred in Aubervilliers, Sarcelles, Montmagny and Persan. French police claim incidents Thursday night have diminished in intensity compared to the previous night, with only fifty vehicles set on fire [28]. Prefect Jean-François Cordet said in a statement that "contrary to the previous nights, there were fewer direct clashes with the forces of order." Siyakah Traoré, the brother of one of the two dead teenagers, called for rioters to "calm down and stop ransacking everything." [29]. On the other hand, violence spread to Lille and Toulouse for the first time [30]. 355 vehicles around France were torched and 170 people arrested [31]. Also reported was that woman on crutches in her fifties was set on fire the previous Wednesday as she exited a bus; "She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns" [32]. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue Pierrefitte [33]. Firefighters were attacked while rescuing a sick person in Meaux.
  • Saturday November 5 - several thousand residents of Aulnay-sous-Bois joined a march in protest against the riots, initiated by the commune's mayor, Gérard Gaudron. At noon, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met with Nicolas Sarkozy and other cabinet members. Yves Bot, public prosecutor of the city of Paris, on Europe 1 radio described the events as organized violence, well beyond spontaneously erupting riots. Bot alleged that adolescents in other cities were being incited to commence rioting via the internet. Bot said that the violence was directed against institutions of the Republic, but he denied it being ethnic in character [34].

Political and police response

File:DominiquedeVillepinandJean-LouisBorloo.jpg
Dominique de Villepin and Jean-Louis Borloo in 2 november 2005.

The riots have been described by an official of the Action Police CFTC police union as a "civil war" and called for the imposition of a curfew. [35], [36]. However, an official of the UNSA-Police union, which represents the majority of riot police, denied that this is the case [37]. In response to the riots, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy stated that police officers should be armed with non-lethal weapons to combat urban violence. [38] The French government, even prior to these riots, has been equipping law enforcement forces with less-lethal weapons (such as "flash-balls" and Tasers) in order to better deal with petty delinquency and urban unrest, especially in poor suburban communities.

Nicolas Sarkozy, who has consistently advocated a tough approach to crime, is a major probable contender for the 2007 presidential election. Success or failure on his part in quelling violence in suburban ghettos may thus have far-ranging implications. Any action by Sarkozy is likely to be attacked by the political opposition, as well as by members of his political coalition UMP who also expect to run for the presidency. Le Monde, in a 5 November editorial [39] reminisces about the "catastrophic" elections of 2002 where right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to enter the second round of voting, showing concern that a similar situation might arise in the upcoming elections as a backlash to the riots.

After the fourth night of riots, Sarkozy declared a zero-tolerance policy towards urban violence and announced that 17 companies of riot police (C.R.S.) and 7 mobile police squadrons (escadrons de gendarmerie mobile) would be stationed in contentious Paris neighborhoods. Sarkozy has said that he believes that some of the violence may be at the instigation of organized gangs. "... All of this doesn't appear to us to be completely spontaneous," he said. [40] Undercover police officers were sent to identify "gang leaders, drug traffickers and big shots." Sarkozy's approach was criticized by left-wing politicians who called for greater public funding for housing, education, and job creation, and refraining from "dangerous demagoguery". [41] Sarkozy was further criticized after he referred to the rioters racaille and voyous [42] (translating to "scum," [43] "riff-raff," [44], "thugs," [45] or "hoodlums" [46]).

During his visit to Clichy-sous-Bois, the Interior Minister was to meet with the families of the two youths killed, but when the tear gas grenade was sent into the Clichy mosque, the families pulled out of the meeting. Banou Traoré's brother Siyakah said, "There is no way we’re going to see Sarkozy, who is incompetent. What happened in the mosque is really disrespectful." [47] The families finally met Sarkozy on November 3rd.

Azouz Begag, "ministre délégué à la promotion de l'égalité des chances" (delegate minister for the promotion of equality of opportunities), the ministry devoted to rooting out discrimination, made several declarations about the recent unrest, opposing himself to Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy for the latter's use of "imprecise, warlike semantics", which he says cannot help bring back calm in the affected areas. [48]

On November 5, several government officials suggested there was some "hidden hand" co-ordinating the rioting. Paris prosecutor Yves Bot told Europe 1 radio that ""This is done in a way that gives every appearance of being coordinated." However, the news agency Reuters reported several Parisians argued that this response was unjustified, and that the situation would be much worse had there been an individual or organisation co-ordinating the riots.

Underlying causes

History of violence in affected areas

Seine-Saint-Denis has had one of the highest violent crime rates of all French départements. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said in an October 2005 interview with Le Monde that vandalism and violent crime (including hate crimes) are a matter of daily life in suburbs all over France, and claimed that so far this year 9000 police cars had been stoned, and 20 to 40 cars were torched each night.[49]. The Gendarmerie Nationale reported 2,432 vehicles torched and 12,362 incidents of urban violence in 2004.[50]. In October 2001, a synagogue in Clichy-sous-Bois was attacked with a Molotov cocktail and the same synagogue was attacked again in August 2002 [51]

The Union nationale des syndicats autonomes (UNSA) des policiers, a police work union, has suggested that recent budget cuts in the "proximity police" ("police de proximité", police units in charge for preventing crime and tensions in the "cités") should be reversed. [52]

The French newspaper Le Figaro reports that on October 27 a 56 year old white man was pulled from his car by by a group of youths in Epinay, and beaten to death in front of his wife and daughter[53]. Not directly connected to the riots, the murder was apparantly minimized, and not covered by any other major national or international media.

Poverty

According to The Guardian, "the unrest has highlighted tensions between wealthy big cities and their grim ghettoised banlieues, home to immigrants from the Maghreb and West Africa who have never been fully integrated into French society and have become an underclass for whom hopelessness and discrimination are normal." The BBC described "discontent among many French youths of North African origin" and discrimination against immigrants, highlighting that "the pressure group SOS Racisme regularly highlights cases of employers discarding applicants with foreign names." [54]

Racial and religious tensions

Many residents of Clichy-sous-Bois and nearby areas are first or second generation immigrants from former French colonies, and half of the suburb's population of 28,000 are under the age of 25. The Seine-Saint-Denis département has the largest Arab concentration in France (around 30%), and similarly high unemployment rates (30% in La Courneuve, 23% in Clichy-sous-Bois, rising to 50% among the youth). During the 1960s, following the French rule in Algeria, an estimated one million Arabs and Berbers from North Africa, mostly Muslims, immigrated to France. A large number of them live on the outskirts of Paris, where a so-called "white flight" has occurred, causing drastic changes in the racial, religious, and economic demographics of Parisian neighbourhoods that are now regarded as dangerous ghettos.

The BBC reports that French society's perceptions of Islam and of immigrants have alienated some French Muslims and may have been a factor in the causes of the riots; "Islam is seen as the biggest challenge to the country's secular model in the past 100 years," and the "assertiveness of French Islam is seen as a threat not just to the values of the republic, but to its very security," due to "the worldwide rise of Islamic militancy." The BBC also questioned whether such alarm is justified, citing that France's Muslim ghettos are not hotbeds of separatism and that "the suburbs are full of people desperate to integrate into the wider society". [55] Laws providing for restrictions on display of religious symbols in schools, including the Muslim hijab, have also been the source of debate and political tension in France. [56] Some sources claimed that the alleged failure of assimilation in France is evidenced by the riots; "The republican model of integration of ethnic minorities is in trouble. The young people of the suburbs are not in agreement with any aspect of this model." said Maurice Szafran, the publisher of the French magazine Marianne. [57]

World reaction

The United States on Friday, November 4, issued a warning to Americans traveling in France to avoid areas in and around Paris where angry protesters have set fire to buildings and cars. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. Embassy in Paris warned of rioting in parts of the capital and beyond and urged travelers to move away quickly if they encountered demonstrations. Asked to comment directly on the riots, McCormack said it was a French internal issue, but added: "Certainly, as anybody would, we mourn the loss of life in these kinds of situations. But, again, these are issues for the French people and the French government to address."[58]

References

 
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