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Cars torched at liberty's heart as Paris gripped by guerilla warfare
IT is a French revolution in rioting - a war of attrition where the enemy is almost impossible to detect and the weapon is a Molotov cocktail.Their targets are cars, buses, schools, nurseries, gyms, warehouses and brasseries across Paris and in other cities. Comparisons with the Gaza Strip are impossible to avoid. The rioting reached a peak on Saturday night with more than 900 cars torched, and nearly 200 arrests as authorities vowed to step up action against the youths responsible for 10 nights of violence. But the riots are now a grave threat to the very concept of public order in France, striking central Paris on Saturday night. Place de la Republique, 10 minutes' walk from Notre Dame, is the fabled heart of the Parisian protest. Overshadowed by an enormous statue representing liberty, equality and fraternity, Republique became the latest symbolic stage for the rioters when they torched four cars in the square. Car burnings were also reported in the expensive 17th arrondissement. This is not a conventional urban riot where a large, angry mob confronts a wall of riot-shield wielding police. There are no pitched battles. Like the Israeli troops in Gaza during the height of the intifada, the thousands of police deployed across the Paris suburbs are frustrated by the guerilla tactics of the firebombers who now rarely attack directly. While there have been sporadic reports of sniper fire at police, most of the gangs prefer to move in small bands setting fire to cars, buses, shops and public buildings, then moving on quickly before firefighters or police arrive. It is difficult to disagree with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy when he says these attacks are being carefully planned by a group of mafia-style organised criminals. Even the anguished and absolutely legitimate cries of discrimination and a history of stigmatisation by the residents of the maligned suburbs, many of them the despairing jobless children and grandchildren of France's former colonies, are beginning to pale into the background. Mr Sarkozy is the bete-noire of the young people of the banlieue, or outer suburbs, the Left and some politicians on the Right, not to mention most of the French press. But is the Interior Minister destroying the infrastructure of poor communities, by blowing up buses, disrupting trains, attempting to set fire to disabled passengers, terrorising tourists, and firebombing places of work? Is he frightening away tourists from France, such as the Russian tour group who were set upon by hoodlums, and had their tour bus torched? Is he shutting down the main train to Charles de Gaulle airport because conductors have been roughed up by gang members? It is time for the French to stop blaming their tough-talking Interior Minister and reunite for peace, justice and order. And then the country can deal with the problem it has failed to resolve for more than 30 years -- how to welcome and truly integrate an estimated 5 to 7 million immigrants from Africa into the mainstream of French society, by offering them genuinely equal treatment, jobs, and a sense of belonging in a country that is elitist, overwhelmingly white in its upper echelons and hypocritical to the core. Posted by: Thromoper Flolung1953 2005-11-06 |
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