In French Suburbs, Same Rage, but New Tactics
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: November 28, 2007
PARIS, Nov. 27 — Two years after France’s immigrant suburbs exploded in rage, the rituals and acts of resentment have reappeared with an eerie sameness: roving gangs clashing with riot police forces, the government appealing for calm, residents complaining that they are ignored.
And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.
More than 100 officers have been wounded, several of them seriously, according to the police. Thirty were hit with buckshot and pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, Patrice Ribeiro, a police spokesman, said in a telephone interview. One of the officers lost an eye; another’s shoulder was shattered by gunfire.
It is legal to own a shotgun in France — as long as the owner has a license — and police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youths were procuring more weapons.
“This is a real guerrilla war,” Mr. Ribeiro told RTL radio, warning that the police, who have struggled to avoid excessive force, will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.
The police have made more than 30 arrests but have been restrained in controlling the violence, using tear gas to disperse the bands of young people and firing paint balls to identify people for possible arrests later.
The prefecture of the police in the Val d’Oise area, where most of the violence has occurred, said Tuesday night that there were no reported injuries among civilians that could be linked to the police.
The events of the past three days, set off by the deaths of two teenagers whose minibike collided with a police vehicle on Sunday, make clear that the underlying causes of frustration and anger — particularly among unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants — remain the same.
“We have heard promise after promise, but nothing has been done in the suburbs since the last riots, nothing,” said François Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, which has been struck by the violence, in an interview. “The suburbs are like tinderboxes. You have people in terrible social circumstances, plus all the rage, plus all the hate, plus all the rumors, and all you need is one spark to set them on fire.”
On Tuesday, there were the first signs of the violence spreading beyond the Paris region when a dozen cars were set afire in the southern city of Toulouse.
In the wake of the unrest in 2005, the government of then-President Jacques Chirac (with Nicolas Sarkozy, now the president, as the tough, law-and-order interior minister) announced measures to improve life in the suburbs, including extra money for housing, schools and neighborhood associations, as well as counseling and job training for unemployed youths. None has gone very far.
At that time, Mr. Sarkozy alienated large numbers of inhabitants in the troubled ethnic pockets of France, but afterward reverted to a low-key approach, which he has maintained ever since. During his presidential campaign, he stayed away from the troubled suburbs, aware that his presence could inflame public opinion against him.
In his six months as president, he has largely focused on injecting new life into France’s flaccid economy through creating jobs and lowering taxes and consumer prices.
His most notable initiative in dealing with youth crime has been punitive: the passage of a law last July that required a minimum sentence for repeat offenders and in many cases allowed minors between 16 and 18 years old to be tried and sentenced as adults.
Since September, Fadela Amara, his outspoken junior minister charged with drawing up a policy for the suburbs, has been holding town hall meetings throughout France in preparation for what is to be a “Marshall Plan” for the suburbs. Her proposals are scheduled to be made public in January.
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