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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.
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