Ericka Hegoburu
Béranger Thomas
Riots in Paris
As the state of emergency is
being declared, and the curfew coming into effect, it is crucial understanding
the reasons behind the riots is. The effectiveness of the French integration
model is definitely in question. We shall first try to characterize this
phenomenon through the analysis of three articles from the international press
(the Daily Telegraph, BBC News and The New York Times). We will then comment a
transcript of the infamous Rush Limbaugh Show, some French bashing program
known for bringing stupidity to new heights.
Articles analysed:
§
“A country in flames... French cities teeter on the edge of anarchy”, by
William Wilicher, Daily Telegraph, 6/11/05
§
“Tough French warnings for rioters”, BBC News, 6/11/05
§
“While Paris burns” , The New York Times, 08/11/05
§
“Muslim Riots in France? Blame Bush!”, The Rush Limbaugh Show (*),
07/11/05
On October 27th, two teenagers died
in an electric substation in Clichy: according to the rumours, they were
fleeing the police. After their death, successive nights of rioting followed in
different housing estates of Paris suburbian area and civil unrest spread
mainly through the outskirts of other urban areas all over France and has
continued for twelve consecutive nights.
The civil unrest is manifest primarily in mass
arson attacks on vehicles and buildings, but has also led to violent clashes
between civilians, mostly youths, and the police. So far, thousands of vehicles
have been torched and several hundred people have been arrested. Rioters have
fired on police with pistols and shotguns in a southern Parisian suburb,
injuring more than 120 policemen, three of them seriously. The first casualty
was reported to be an Parisian who was set upon whilst trying to extinguish a
fire, and another man died yesterday, after being beaten up to death by
youngsters, just because of his taking a picture of a light for his business.
------------------
(*) as found
on :
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_110705/content/rush_is_right.guest.html
Until yesterday, more than 6000 cars were burnt
all over the 274 different suburbs where riots occurred and more than 1.500
people have been arrested so far.
Apart from the polemical circumstances of the
two teenagers’ death, that is to say whether they were or not actually chased
by the police, and, above all, whether the police knew or not that they were at
risk by trying to flee towards the electric substation, the riots were also
caused by the Interior Minister’s visit, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Clichy-sous-Bois,
few days after the death of the two teenagers, late at night.
His using a polemical vocabulary as he referred to the rioters as
"riff-raff", "thugs", racaille, and voyous,
lead to the increase of violence, which the opening of talks between the Prime
Minister, Dominique de Villepin, and representatives of the surburbian rioters,
did not manage to calm down.
Those events contributed to underline mainly two burning issues:
Both
of the articles deal with the facts, that is to say the description of the
violent events that occurred in various French cities. They both depict the nights
of rioting, give precise numbers about the people arrested, the thousands of
cars burnt or the shop and public buildings destructed. The Daily Telegraph
goes further in comparing those events with what happened in France in May 1968
in terms of urban violence, and relates the fact that even the firemen were
forced to launch their urban trouble plan, which is based on tactics used by
Northern Irish fire brigades, accommodated to urban violence and riots.
They
also insist on the fact that the rioters torched the cars, schools or shops of
their own neighbours, that is to say of people who actually understand their
score since they have the same problems and difficulties. Even themselves will
suffer from the aftermaths of those events, because they caused the lockout of
several proximity stores and community centres.
In
spite of referring in their articles to Nicolas Sarkozy's sentence which set
fire to the suburbs, none of the journalist mentions the tensions inside the
government, mainly between the Prime Minister and the Interior Minister, as
well as the Social Promotion Minister, Azouz Begag, who as North African
origins, and therefore would have been a better interlocutor to negotiate with
the rioters in Matignon, since they refused to deal with Nicolas Sarkozy. Not
to mention too President Chirac's silence upon the events. This lack of
cooperation between the different institutions of the government involved in
the problem is obviously one of the causes of the worsening of the situation,
by delaying real measures as relevant responses to the problem. All those
factors are to be added to Sarkozy's attitude, who decided to visit Clichy
housing estate late at night, well surrounded by cameras, knowing that it
would, for sure, be interpreted as a provocation. The use of the terms
"scum" in front of all the media, the mise-en-scene of his brief but
impacting exchanges with the suburbs inhabitants, whether they were rioters or
not, was widely spread the day after on TV, newspapers, radios, etc., which
contributed to worsen the situation in others cities all over the country.
Then,
only the Daily Telegraph evokes the roots of the problem in the French suburbs,
even if the journalist describes them as the “French 21st century
ghettos”, ignoring the fact that the phenomenon as more has 30 years. The core
of the problem isn't only the death of those two teenagers, nor Sarkozy's
attitude, but is obviously the lack of relevant solutions to the situation of
those ghettos.
The
lack of dialogue and voluntary measures has lead to the implantation of
fanatical extremist religious groups, that is why, for the first time,
"Allah akbar" was heard during the riots, chanted by many youngsters
even if Muslim leaders of African and Arab communities in France have also
issued a fatwa, or religious order, against the riots. "It is strictly
forbidden for any Muslim... to take part in any action that strikes blindly at
private or public property or that could threaten the lives of others,"
said the fatwa by the Union of Islamic Organisation of France.
Those
groups have managed to create the missing link between all those youngsters,
most of the time unemployed and looking for references, which the French
Republic has obviously failed to do, creating but then suppressing without any
alternative many social workers posts and programmes, to privileging the
presence of the police, trying to deter them by the threat instead of
explaining the problems, or trying to make them more responsible of their acts
and consequences. Seeing the unemployment of their parents, the children in
these communities reject their parents' values, especially their work ethic, as
criminality is seen as bringing "easy money," while honest behaviour
is seen as leading to poverty. The elder son — grand frère — becomes the
ruler of the family and the model for the young ones (recently, the term
"grand frère" was recuperated to designate young adults from the
suburbs who volunteer to encourage t to enter mainstream French society).
Policymakers have used two different approaches
to curb violence in the French suburbs. Some have advocated the management of
poverty and social isolation by deploying social workers, forming school aid
associations, and instituting crime prevention programs. Others have taken a
more hard-line stance, asserting that the best way to curb the violence is to
improve the police presence in poor and violence-prone neighbourhoods
Yet again cheap labour based immigration
policies are revealed for what they are: dangerous short sighted exploitation!
As analysed in the Herald Tribune, it's clear that the economic exploitation of
people without their assimilation into the culture and shared hope for the
future leads to alienation, hatred and contempt from the second generation.
France is particularly bad at accepting that integration is a two way street.
First, these immigrants accept that they are first and foremost French and then
the wider Indigenous (White) French population accepts their brand of Unique
Frenchness. They have to be treated fairly like any other French person and
without overt or clandestine discrimination in housing, jobs and social
services. Furthermore, all this enforced assimilation which the French promote
or sometimes enforce is not helpful. These immigrants do have a different background
which they wish to incorporate into the larger French society. They don't want
to lose their heritage in a government sanctioned efforts to impose an identity
on them.(eg ban on Hijab)
At the opposite of this left-wing point of view,
we have those that believe social peace can only be restored by force, meaning
to bring in troops, and in the most extreme cases deportation of the aliens
taking part in the riots. One must understand that France is a country where
striking is something of a national sport, where paralysing transport strikes
are tolerated and supported even by those most affected, where the anti-state
violence of 1968 is revered, and where the whole political system is deeply
unpopular and therefore a ripe target... and now where many newspapers are
legitimising the violence, essentially saying "well, if you live in such
squalor, with no job, money, hope or respect, rioting is the only way to draw
attention to your plight". There's no quick fix, but the government must
protect the majority of peace-abiding citizens, and Sarkozy, for electoral
reasons, will eventually get even tougher.
On a less serious and more lightly note, there’s
Rush Limbaugh’s commentary.
In one single commentary, he is able to
introduce the Jews (that’s why the Arabs immigrated to France), Iraq (the
French did not go to Iraq precisely to prevent riots, and it has backfired),
Bush (according to the French, he created the rioters) and the Somalian
warlords (not too sure why they’re in there… Stupid me: the French riots and
Somalia, I had not even made the connection!). And for good measure, he adds
that the French will soon surrender to the rioters…
Thanks to good old Rush’s we now know why France
did not go to war in Iraq. Forget the oil-for-food money (that’s so last
month!), it’s because we wanted to prevent the riots and blame Bush for all
this.
It would be easy to dismiss Rush Limbaugh’s
discourse as being irrelevant. However, with 20 million listeners a week, he is
the most listened-to radio talk show host in the United States and probably the
world. Rush is right in a way : by mocking us, he pinpoints how France has lost
all political credibility and how pitiful it looks in the International scene
right now.