French rioters ignore state of emergency
Rioters shrugged off emergency laws that took effect today, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralysed France’s second-largest city’s subway system with a firebomb.
President Jacques Chirac announced extraordinary security measures, which began today and are valid for a 12-day state of emergency, clearing the way for curfews after nearly two weeks of rioting in neglected and impoverished neighbourhoods with largely Muslim communities.
Officials were forced to shut down the southern city of Lyon’s subway system after a firebomb exploded in a station, a regional government spokesman said, adding no one was hurt. Transport officials were to decide this morning when service could resume, the spokesman said.
Rioters looted and set fire to a furniture and electronics store and an adjacent carpet store in Arras, in the northern Pas-de-Calais region, national police spokesman Patrick Reydy said. Arsonists also set fire to the Nice-Matin newspaper’s office in Grasses, in the south-east Alpes-Maritimes region, he said.
Nine buses were set ablaze at bus depot in Dole, in the eastern Jura region, Reydy said. A bus exploded in Bassens, near the south-west city of Bordeaux after a firebomb was thrown into it, he said, adding the driver escaped.
In Nice, a man was in serious condition after being hit by a barbell that fell from a high-rise building in a neighbourhood where there had been recent riots, a local official said. Authorities were investigating whether it was an accident or an attack.
Youths threw petrol bombs at police who retaliated with tear gas in the southern city of Toulouse, where Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting, LCI television said.
“None of us have a choice,” Sarkozy told police and fire department representatives in Toulouse. “We have to succeed. We will not give a centimetre.”
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, said discrimination was a “daily and repeated” reality in tough suburbs, feeding the frustration of youths made to feel that they don’t belong in France.
“France is wounded. It does not recognise itself in these devastated streets and neighbourhoods, in this outburst of hatred and of violence that vandalises and kills,” Villepin said. “The return to order is the absolute priority.”
“We must be lucid: the republic is at a moment of truth,” Villepin told parliament yesterday in a debate where lawmakers spoke frankly about France’s failings.
Villepin said riot police faced “determined individuals, structured gangs, organised criminality.”
Police say rioters have been using mobile phone text messages and the Internet to organise arson attacks. Police on Monday arrested two teenagers accused of using the Internet to incite other youths to riot.
French regional officials were preparing to use the state of emergency powers to impose curfews.
The Interior Ministry said there was no centralised list of towns and cities that would be affected, because curfew measures were being drawn up locally.
The northern French city of Amiens, the central city of Orleans and Savigny-sur-Orge, in the Essonne region south of Paris said they planned curfews for minors, who must be accompanied by adults at night. Amiens also planned to forbid the sale of petrol in cans to minors.
Curfew violators face up to two months in jail and fines, the Justice Ministry said. Minors face one month in jail. Police – with 8,000 officers deployed and 1,500 reservists called up as reinforcements – are expected to enforce curfews. The army has not been called in.
The 50-year-old state-of-emergency law that Chirac invoked was drawn up to quell unrest in Algeria during its war of independence from France, and was last used in December 1984 by the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand against rioting in the French Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia.
The violence started October 27 as a localised riot in a north-east Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation.
It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths, many of them French-born children of immigrants from France’s former territories like Algeria. France’s suburbs have long been neglected, and their youth complain of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination.
The emergency decree gives officials power to put troublemakers under house arrest, ban or limit the movement of people and vehicles, confiscate weapons and close public spaces where gangs gather, Villepin told parliament. But he said that restoring order “will take time.”
French historians say the rioting is more widespread and more destructive in material terms than the May riots of 1968, when university students erected barricades in Paris’ Latin Quarter and across France, throwing paving stones at police.
That unrest, a turning point in modern France, led to a general strike by 10 million workers and forced President Gen. Charles de Gaulle to dissolve parliament and fire Premier Georges Pompidou.
Vandals burned 1,173 cars overnight on Monday-Tuesday, down from 1,408 vehicles the previous night, police said. Police made 330 arrests, down 395 the night before.
The violence claimed its first victim on Monday, with the death of a 61-year-old man beaten into a coma last week. Foreign governments have warned tourists to be careful in France.
Apparent copycat attacks have spread to Belgium and Germany, where cars were burned. France is using fast-track trials to punish rioters, worrying some human rights campaigners.
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