Thread: Chirac orders Curfews! riots spread to 300 towns + Germany

President Jacques Chirac will this morning authorise French prefects to establish curfews in the hope of stemming the violence that has engulfed France over the past 12 nights, prime minister Dominique de Villepin announced on television last night, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.

11/8/2005
The Irish Times

As de Villepin outlined his plans, violence erupted in a suburb of the southwestern city of Toulouse, where police said youths set fire to a bus and 21 cars. At least two cars were set ablaze near Lille in the north, according to the Reuters news agency. Fourteen cars were on fire in the Yvelines district west of Paris and 17 in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of the capital, police said.

Rioting had reached unprecedented proportions overnight on Sunday, when 1,408 cars were torched and 400 young men were arrested across France, bringing the total to 4,700 vehicles destroyed and 1,200 people taken into custody since October 27th.

The riots also claimed their first fatality when Jean-Jacques Le Chenedec (61), a retired automobile worker who was beaten unconscious when he and a neighbour tried to put out a fire lit by rioters on Friday night, died in hospital. Residents of his town of Stains, north of Paris, held a silent protest march last night and his widow Nicole said she hoped her husband's death would be avenged.

Half of those arrested are minors, and police say they caught an 11-year-old child throwing a petrol bomb. Attacks were reported in 274 French towns and cities. The injured up to last night included 36 policemen, 10 with buckshot wounds, and a 13-month old baby, hospitalised after being hit in the head by a stone in an attack on a bus in a Paris suburb. Two churches were burned, in Lens in the north and Sète in the south.

The governments of the US, Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, Australia and a half dozen other countries have warned citizens travelling to France to avoid troubled areas.

In what appear to be copycat crimes, at least 16 vehicles were burned in the German cities of Berlin and Bremen, and the Belgian capital Brussels, on Sunday.

"The violence we have seen these past few days is unacceptable," de Villepin said on the evening news.

He cited the killing of Mr Le Chenedec, the murder of another man who was killed by muggers who wanted his camera a few hours before the riots started on October 27th, and the burning of a handicapped woman who was unable to flee a bus targeted by rioters.

He said the violence was inexcusable and that the "response of the state will be firm and just".

His government has already deployed 8,000 police and gendarmes throughout France, de Villepin said, and he has called in 1,500 reinforcements. He has asked tribunals to judge accused rioters immediately.

De Villepin expressed support for his much criticised interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and said the government was united.

To fight the malaise of the banlieues (suburbs), he said he would strengthen the powers of mayors, and restore funding for local associations.

Some €310 million earmarked for immigrant suburbs had been axed from this year's budget. He also plans to make education a priority and promised to fight discrimination.

http://www.alipac.us/article-857-thread-1-0.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051107/ap_ ... ce_rioting

France to Impose Curfews to Quell Rioting

By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago

PARIS - France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris' suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday, calling a return to order "our No. 1 responsibility."
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The tough new measures came as France's worst civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus after sundown and pelting police with gasoline bombs and rocks. Earlier, a 61-year-old retired auto worker died of wounds from an attack last week, the first death in the violence.

Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "we are not at that point."

But "at each step, we will take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly throughout France," he said. "That is our prime duty: ensuring everyone's protection."

The recourse to curfews followed the worst overnight violence so far, and foreign governments warned their citizens to be careful in France. Apparent copycat attacks took place outside France, with five cars torched outside the main train station in Brussels, Belgium. German police were investigating the burning of five cars in Berlin.

The violence started Oct. 27 among youths in a northeastern Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers but has grown into a nationwide insurrection.

The mayhem is forcing France to confront anger building for decades in neglected suburbs and among the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants. The teenagers whose deaths sparked the rioting were of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent. They were electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation, apparently thinking they were being chased.

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged in a meeting Monday with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga that France has not integrated immigrant youths, she said.

Chirac deplored the "ghettoization of youths of African or North African origin" and recognized "the incapacity of French society to fully accept them," said Vike-Freiberga.

France "has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected," Chirac added, noting that unemployment runs as high as 40 percent in some suburbs, four times the national rate, according to Vike-Freiberga.

Vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles overnight into Monday, as well as churches, schools and businesses, and injured 36 police officers in clashes around the country, setting a new high for arson and violence, said France's national police chief, Michel Gaudin. Attacks were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests.

"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said.

In terms of material destruction, the unrest is France's worst since World War II â€â€