French police face ‘permanent intifada’

[Bono]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_re_eu/france_suburban_violence_4



By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer Sun Oct 22, 8:34 PM ET

EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France - On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized.

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted — and some now receive police escorts in such areas.

On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.

More broadly, worsening violence in France testifies to Europe's growing struggle to integrate its ethnic minorities. Some mainstream European politicians — adopting positions previously confined largely to far-right fringes — are suggesting that the minorities themselves are not doing enough to adapt to European mores.

In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, this month touched off a wide debate about the rights and obligations of Muslims by saying that he asks devout Muslim women to remove their veils when visiting his office. Prime Minister
Tony Blair said Islam needs to modernize.

In France, a high school teacher received death threats, forcing him into hiding, after he wrote a newspaper editorial in September saying Muslim fundamentalists are trying to muzzle Europe's democratic liberties.

Ethnic integration and violence against police are both becoming issues in the campaign for the French presidency. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender on the right, said this month that those who do not love France do not have to stay, echoing a longtime slogan of the extreme-right National Front: "France, love it or leave it."

Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.

"Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned," he said in an interview.

Larger, more mainstream police unions sharply disagree that the suburban unrest has any religious basis. However, they do say that some youth gangs no longer seem content to throw stones or torch cars and instead appear determined to hurt police officers — or worse.

"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."

Sadio Sylla, an unemployed mother of three, watched the Oct. 13 ambush of the police patrol in Epinay-sur-Seine from her second-floor window. She, other witnesses and police union officials said up to 50 masked youths dashed out from behind trees.

One of the three officers needed 30 stitches to his face after being struck by a rock. On Saturday, five people were placed under investigation for attempted murder in relation to the ambush.

The attack was one of at least four gang beatings of police in Parisian suburbs since Sept. 19. Early Friday, a dozen hooded people hurled stones, iron bars and bottles filled with gasoline at two police vehicles in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a flashpoint of last year's riots, said Guillaume Godet, a city hall spokesman. One officer required three stitches to his head.

Minority youths have long complained that police are more heavy-handed in their dealings with them than with whites, demanding their papers and frisking them for no apparent reason.

Such perceived ill-treatment fuels feelings of injustice, as do the difficulties that many youths from immigrant families have finding work.

Distrust and tension thrive. Rumors have flown around some housing projects that police are hoping to use the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week, to round up known troublemakers, on the basis that fasting all day will have made the youths weaker and easier to catch.

Police say that suggestion is ludicrous. However, they are on guard ahead of the first anniversary this week of last year's riots. That violence began after two youths who thought police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted to death.

Police unions suspect that the recent attacks may be an attempt to spark new riots.

"We are getting the impression these youths want a 'remake' of what happened last year," said Fred Lagache, national secretary of the Alliance police union. "The youths are trying to cause a police error to justify chaos."

[Bono]

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2414175,00.html

Why 112 cars are burning every day

By Charles Bremner
A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs
FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.”

Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he added.

Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who hopes to win the presidency next May, has once again taken the offensive, staging raids on the no-go areas and promising no mercy for the thugs who reign there.

With polls showing law and order as the top public concern, his presidential chances hang on his image as a tough cop.

M Sarkozy’s muscular approach is being challenged not just by Socialist opponents. President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.

National politics seem far from Clichy, a leafy town of hulking apartment buildings only ten miles but a universe away from the Elysée Palace. However, the Interior Minister is cited by the estate youths as the symbol of their anger. “Sarko wants to wipe us out, clear us off the map,” said Rachid, 19. “They said they would help us after last year, but we’ve got nothing.”

Rachid is to attend a march next Friday for Zyed and Bouna, the teenagers whose deaths in an electrical station sparked the rioting that engulfed the Seine-Saint-Denis département, known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois. The boys, aged 17 and 15, who were hiding from police when they were electrocuted, are seen in Clichy as martyrs. Amor Benna, 61, the Tunisian father of Zyed, appealed this week to the young to refrain from violence and use their votes for change. “I don’t want to see cars burning again,” he said from his home on the Chêne Pointu estate. But the unhappiness was understandable, said M Benna, a street cleaner. “The young were born here and they are French. But they have nothing. The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened.”

[MasterJedi]

Just give the police officers automatic weapons and then when they're attacked they just kill the people and the problem is solved.

[AuH2O]

I think the solution will be of the Warsaw variety, heck it's already pretty close.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course the French police would say that, wouldn't they?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just give the police officers automatic weapons and then when they're attacked they just kill the people and the problem is solved.

I seem to recall that the really bad riots last year were sparked off by the death of two people on some electric fence or something as a result of the actions of the police. Or something very similer to that.

The only solution to this would be the French government/establishment giving a damn about the extreme deprivation, social isolation, lack of jobs, lack of oppertunities and so on, on these estates.
They won't lift a finger o/c.

[Colin]

Some information about this Action Police union mentioned in both articles:

Action Police CFTC is a very small police union in France, affiliated with the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC) Christian trade union confederation. Its general secretary is Michel Thooris.

In the 2003 elections of union representatives among the police, Action Police CFTC took 0.32% of the vote [1]. Its rhetoric emphasises the "acknowledgement of the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe and attachment to Christian social morals".

Their leader, Michel Thooris, displays the royalist fleur-de-lys and cross on the French flag on his internet site. [2] He is also a member of the far-right Mouvement pour la France political party.

Describing itself as "apolitical", Action Police CFTC nevertheless adopts positions on matters of internal politics, notably:

against the right of vote for foreigners, as suggested by Nicolas Sarkozy [7] ("Action Police CFTC is outraged by this proposal of the Ministry of the Interior and demands applications of the reciprocity principle for all French citizens who are legal residents of a foreign country.")

against the revision of the 1905 law about the separation of Church and State, specifically citing fears that this would result in government funding for Muslims


From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Police.

[Umengus]

Le Pen ready to take benefits of the situation...

[MasterJedi]

Just give the police officers automatic weapons and then when they're attacked they just kill the people and the problem is solved.

I seem to recall that the really bad riots last year were sparked off by the death of two people on some electric fence or something as a result of the actions of the police. Or something very similer to that.

The only solution to this would be the French government/establishment giving a damn about the extreme deprivation, social isolation, lack of jobs, lack of oppertunities and so on, on these estates.
They won't lift a finger o/c.

Yes, they need to do that but they need to use force to keep the damn radical immigrants in line so there isn't rioting with force.

[afleitch]

Maybe if the government dealt with the problem of unemployment in the estates outside the peripherique creating economic idleness leading to frustration and contributing to the problem things might be different. I've stayed in one of them, Bezons; the people are great but by god are they bored.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Le Pen ready to take benefits of the situation...

Wait a minute... he's still alive??

[Bono]

Some information about this Action Police union mentioned in both articles:

Action Police CFTC is a very small police union in France, affiliated with the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC) Christian trade union confederation. Its general secretary is Michel Thooris.

In the 2003 elections of union representatives among the police, Action Police CFTC took 0.32% of the vote [1]. Its rhetoric emphasises the "acknowledgement of the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe and attachment to Christian social morals".

Their leader, Michel Thooris, displays the royalist fleur-de-lys and cross on the French flag on his internet site. [2] He is also a member of the far-right Mouvement pour la France political party.

Describing itself as "apolitical", Action Police CFTC nevertheless adopts positions on matters of internal politics, notably:

against the right of vote for foreigners, as suggested by Nicolas Sarkozy [7] ("Action Police CFTC is outraged by this proposal of the Ministry of the Interior and demands applications of the reciprocity principle for all French citizens who are legal residents of a foreign country.")

against the revision of the 1905 law about the separation of Church and State, specifically citing fears that this would result in government funding for Muslims


From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Police.

Sunbstanciate that the Mouvement pour la France is "far-right". There is no basis for this, except from the media's criteria, that is, every conservative party that opposes the EU must be "far-right".

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

There's always shooting all the troublemakers, not allowing ANYONE who evne remotely looks arab/african into france and opening immigration from places with more asimlatable cultures.

[Colin]

Some information about this Action Police union mentioned in both articles:

Action Police CFTC is a very small police union in France, affiliated with the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC) Christian trade union confederation. Its general secretary is Michel Thooris.

In the 2003 elections of union representatives among the police, Action Police CFTC took 0.32% of the vote [1]. Its rhetoric emphasises the "acknowledgement of the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe and attachment to Christian social morals".

Their leader, Michel Thooris, displays the royalist fleur-de-lys and cross on the French flag on his internet site. [2] He is also a member of the far-right Mouvement pour la France political party.

Describing itself as "apolitical", Action Police CFTC nevertheless adopts positions on matters of internal politics, notably:

against the right of vote for foreigners, as suggested by Nicolas Sarkozy [7] ("Action Police CFTC is outraged by this proposal of the Ministry of the Interior and demands applications of the reciprocity principle for all French citizens who are legal residents of a foreign country.")

against the revision of the 1905 law about the separation of Church and State, specifically citing fears that this would result in government funding for Muslims


From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Police.

Sunbstanciate that the Mouvement pour la France is "far-right". There is no basis for this, except from the media's criteria, that is, every conservative party that opposes the EU must be "far-right".

Well I would substanciate that if I could read French, which I can't, by posting their platform. I just got that directly from Wiki, don't shoot the messanger. Jesus Christ Bono calm the hell down.

[Gabu]

Well I would substanciate that if I could read French, which I can't, by posting their platform. I just got that directly from Wiki, don't shoot the messanger. Jesus Christ Bono calm the hell down.

I can read enough of it to get the general idea of what they're about.  This page contains essentially what they're about.  As far as I can tell, they're your typical nationalist sort of party.

I think the most important part is the part entitled "Notre combat : l’esprit de vérité sans tabou".  Here's a rough translation of that bit:

Our fight: truth without hindrance of taboos

Lies lead to violence, while truth makes peace.  The MPF intends to break the taboos of "political correctness".

Unlike the globalized elites, the Movement for France wishes to promote nations as beacons of stability in the world, and thus of peace between men.  This is why the Movement for France proposes a new Europe, a Europe of the fatherlands and of the people.  The Movement for France does not want to speak against immigrants, their religions, and their cultures.  But it protests against multiculturalism, which has led to divisions within France - divisions into ethnic regroupings - which sap the very basis of social order by uprooting and shifting people around.

The Movement for France assumes the mantle of the promotion of popular patriotism and of preserving unity within the Republic [of France].  It fights against the two ideologies of the moment: communitarianism and globalization.  It wants to return hope to all of France, which suffers in the "torn territories" - the victims of the delocalizations - and in the "lost territories of the Republic", where our fellow citizens, confronted with uncontrolled immigration, live in unrelenting fear.  The Movement for France intends to return priority to the citizen.  Its ambition is to give back, simply, and free of taboo, pride and hope to our compatriots, far from any xenophobia.

Attempt has been made more to preserve the general idea and force of the statement than to preserve the exact words used (when the two are at odds with one another, that is).

Make of this as you will.  If you want anything else translated, feel free to ask.

[Umengus]

Well I would substanciate that if I could read French, which I can't, by posting their platform. I just got that directly from Wiki, don't shoot the messanger. Jesus Christ Bono calm the hell down.

I can read enough of it to get the general idea of what they're about.  This page contains essentially what they're about.  As far as I can tell, they're your typical nationalist sort of party.

I think the most important part is the part entitled "Notre combat : l’esprit de vérité sans tabou".  Here's a rough translation of that bit:

Our fight: truth without hindrance of taboos

Lies lead to violence, while truth makes peace.  The MPF intends to break the taboos of "political correctness".

Unlike the globalized elites, the Movement for France wishes to promote nations as beacons of stability in the world, and thus of peace between men.  This is why the Movement for France proposes a new Europe, a Europe of the fatherlands and of the people.  The Movement for France does not want to speak against immigrants, their religions, and their cultures.  But it protests against multiculturalism, which has led to divisions within France - divisions into ethnic regroupings - which sap the very basis of social order by uprooting and shifting people around.

The Movement for France assumes the mantle of the promotion of popular patriotism and of preserving unity within the Republic [of France].  It fights against the two ideologies of the moment: communitarianism and globalization.  It wants to return hope to all of France, which suffers in the "torn territories" - the victims of the delocalizations - and in the "lost territories of the Republic", where our fellow citizens, confronted with uncontrolled immigration, live in unrelenting fear.  The Movement for France intends to return priority to the citizen.  Its ambition is to give back, simply, and free of taboo, pride and hope to our compatriots, far from any xenophobia.

Attempt has been made more to preserve the general idea and force of the statement than to preserve the exact words used (when the two are at odds with one another, that is).

Make of this as you will.  If you want anything else translated, feel free to ask.

nationalist=far right? that's the question...

In politics, we are always the extremist of someone...