IT’S A QUAGMIRE, IN FRANCE:
When the call went out about a car burglary in the raw suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine north of here last weekend, three officers in a patrol car rushed over and found themselves surrounded by 30 youths in hoods throwing rocks and swinging bats and metal bars.
Neither tear gas nor stun guns stopped the assault. Only when reinforcements arrived did the siege end. One officer was left with broken teeth and in need of 30 stitches to his face.
The attack was rough but not unique. In the last three weeks alone, three similar assaults on the police have occurred in these suburbs, which a year ago were aflame with the rage of unemployed, undereducated youth, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants.
In fact, with the anniversary of those riots approaching, spiking violent crime statistics across the area suggest not only that things have not improved, but that they also may well have worsened. Residents and experts say that fault lines run even deeper than before and that widespread violence may flare up again at any moment.
“Tension is rising very dramatically,” said Patrice Ribeiro, the deputy head of the Synergie Officiers police union. “There is the will to kill.”
The headline says that “anger is festering,” but as the French police note, it’s more like a climate of impunity. And, as Claire Berlinski notes, it’s exacerbated by an unwillingness to encourage assimilation. As Jim Bennett has said, “democracy, multiculturalism, open immigration — pick any two.”
UPDATE: More here:
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.”
Read the whole thing. (Via Newsbeat 1). And this passage suggests that the inflexible French economy may be partly to blame: “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.”
Mickey Kaus’s thoughts on the welfare/terrorism connection seem more and more prescient.
MORE: A question for Nicolas Sarkozy: “if security is the responsibility of the state, what does he have to say about what is currently going on in the French suburbs?”