Volume 6, No. 11, December. 2005

 

Flare Up in France

Suman

 

As Mao once said "A Single Spark can light a Prairie Fire". It took a minor incident to lead to a major countrywide flare-up by the immigrant community in the country. It was a revolt of the most oppressed; spontaneous and primarily directed against the state and the rich. It was the biggest conflagration France has seen since the 1968 student revolt. By the end of nearly 20 days of violence, which the government was unable to quell even using emergency powers, ended with the burning of about 8,500 vehicles (mostly government) and the destruction of hundreds of public buildings. It began from the immigrant ghettos of Paris and slowly spread not only to the rest of the country but also other cities of Europe. Though the revolt was by the underbelly of French society, the Black youth, mostly Muslims, whose parents migrated from African French colonies in the 1960s to meet the labour needs of the post-war boom, it was not directed at whites but at the symbols of the system and the government. The pent-up anger broke loose. Unemployment, crude racism, the ban on head-scarves by educational institutions, regular police harassment, etc were the raw material that fed the anger.

The Conflagration

The embers of discontent were already brewing in the ghettos by mid October. So much so that the fascistic Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy (who is also running to be the next President), said on Oct 19th that there will be a "war without mercy" in the suburbs. On Oct 25th during a visit to the Paris suburb of Argenteuil he was pelted with stones. On Oct.27th two young boys, Zyed and Bouna (aged 15 and 17), flee a police identity check. They enter an electrical relay station and are electrocuted. Angry youth go on a rampage and burn 23 vehicles. And then begin the daily clashes between the black youth and the police which continue to escalate each day spreading to newer townships.

On Nov.2 youth ransack a police station at Aulnay-sous-Bois. On Nov.3rd violence spreads to the eastern city of Dijon and parts of the south and west, with 400 vehicles being burnt. On Nov.4th the violence spreads beyond Paris. President Chirac promises to restore order. Nearly 1,500 vehicles were burnt and 400 arrested that day.

In the beginning the youth resorted to pitched battles with the police and by Nov 4th over 1,000 cars were being torched each day. Petrol bombs and other improvised weapons were used in the attacks. On the 12th successive night of violence on Nov.7th 1,173 vehicles were burnt and 330 arrested. 12 policemen were injured. As the violence mounted the attackers changed their tactic avoiding direct confrontation with the police and resorting to guerrilla attacks to avoid arrest. Masked youth were using mobile telephones to evade the police and re-group. They were also calling for similar actins in other towns through the internet.

In a building in a southern Paris suburb the police found a petrol bomb-making factory in an abandoned building containing 150 explosives ready for use, more than a 100 bottles, litres of fuel and hoods for hiding the faces of the attackers. The Interior minister’s rabid attacks on the blacks only enflamed the situation further. His called them the "scum" behind the urban violence and vowed "zero tolerance" on "rioters" and dispatched an extra 2,000 police to the affected areas. The firing of a grenade at a mosque on the 6th only added to the rage of the bulk of the youth, most of whom are Muslims.

Finally when control went totally out of hand the French Government approved Emergency measures on the affected areas in order to enforce curfew. After days of hit-and-run attacks on cars, municipal buildings, schools the Prime Minister, De Villepin announced that the government would deploy an additional 8,500 police together with another 1,000 reservists. But he dismissed calls to bring out the army for the present. The Emergency measures were invoked under a 50-year old law brought in then in an attempt to quell an insurrection in Algeria, which was then a French colony. He also announced a social and economic package to ‘help’ the people in the ghettos including the re-allocation of funds to educational and social intuitions, which had been reduced in budget cuts introduced by the government.

A Burning Cauldron

France has 5 million black immigrants the bulk of whom are Muslim. Most of them migrated from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco in the 1950s and the 1960s. Their children are born in France and are French citizens, knowing little of their mother country. Yet they are not accepted while white immigrants from East Europe are easily absorbed. Besides the Black are Muslims while the white immigrants are Christian. They are harassed and checked incessantly by the police. They find it hard to get jobs with unemployment as high as 50% in these areas. Their housing estates have no facilities. These are box-like structures whose stairs are covered with graffiti. The walls are moist, the lifts do not work, the paint has peeled off and the corridors stink of urine.

France has about 700 such housing estates located on the periphery of big towns like Paris or Lyon. Over 5 million people live there comprising one-eighth of the population. There is over 25% unemployment in these estates compared to a national average of 10%. Income levels are just 40% of the national average.

Besides all this the discrimination they face in their day-to-day lives have created a pressure-cooker situation, which has been further enflamed by the growing strength of the fascists which uses racism as its main propaganda ploy. In the last elections Le Pen’s fascist party shocked liberal French opinion by getting huge support with the powerful ‘socialists’ being routed. The ruling rightist party of the UMP (Union For a Popular Movement) has its Interior Minister as the main candidate for the Presidential election due in 2007.He has emerged as one of the most popular politicians, appealing to both the left and right with his ability to talk tough on explosive issues such as law and order and immigration. He is himself the son of Hungarian immigrant parents. He is likely to be pitted against the present PM, De Villipan.

The Blacks of France are being pushed to the wall. With globalization resulting in their further marginalization and impoverisation, with the social-democrats turning to be no different from the right-wing parties, with the rising influence of the fascists and their aggressive racism and with the anti-Moslem hostility reaching peak levels after 9/11 — they have no place to turn. With the left in France dominated by the Trotskyites and no significant revolutionary/Maoist force in the country, they have no place to turn to organise effective resistance. It is only such a revolutionary force that can help turn spontaneous revolts into organised resistance.

 

<Top>

 

Home  |  Current Issue  |  Archives  |  Revolutionary Publications  |  Links  |  Subscription

<<  Previous Issue | Next Issue  >>