 FRENCH police deployed 4,000 reinforcements yesterday as marauding youths torched at least two public buses, on the anniversary of the deaths of two teenagers that ignited weeks of riots in largely immigrant housing projects across France. After the buses were burned, ParisÂ’s transport authority curtailed bus service in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of the capital, which is home to thousands of immigrants and their French-born children.
| I'd suggest cutting it off permanently. Most of them seem to have feet. |
Thierre Ange, a 19-year-old witness, said four men attacked the bus, “made everyone get off, then they hit a woman and dragged out the bus driver by his tie” and torched the bus with a gasoline bomb in a bottle. The blackened carcass of another bus that was burned earlier stood across town in Le Blanc Mesnil. Flaming cars became a symbol of the rioting last year, which jolted France into recognising a failure in granting equal opportunities to many minorities — especially those of Arab and black African origin — and the country’s 5 million-strong Muslim population.
| So gutted buses are this year's symbol. La Belle France's failure seems to lie in not begetting little La Belle Frenchmen, and instead stocking up on riffraff. I'd recommend dumping the lot of them and then going to bed with a bottle of good wine and each other. |
The national police said 50 units of extra officers and riot police — or about 4,000 men — were deployed across the country to brace for a possible resurgence of violence. Some 7,000 police are at the ready on an average night in France, officials have said. The outburst of anger at the accidental deaths of the two teens — who were electrocuted in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois while hiding from police on October 27, 2005 — grew into a broader challenge of the French state.
| The French state would be well advised to accept the challenge and make goddamned sure it prevails. |
Several hundred people marched silently Friday through Clichy-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris, in honour of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore. Zyed, 17, was buried in his father’s native Tunisia. Bouna, 15, was of Mauritanian descent. Adolescent boys in hooded sweat shirts made up a large part of the mixed-race crowd, their heads bent as prayers were read in Arabic and French. The pair “became a symbol in the projects,” said one of Zyed Traore’s cousins, Coulibaly. “I don’t see why the violence should recur. That will not solve the problems,” she said.
| The violence isn't meant to solve problems. It's meant to create problems. |
Clichy-sous-Bois has no police station, so officers patrolling the area come from outside and have no connection to residents. There is no public transportation and few families own cars, leaving most people virtually trapped. Unemployment among its 28,000 residents is 23.5% — well above the 9% national average — and is 32% for those between the ages of 15 and 24, according to the newspaper La Croix. |