The Dominion - Marco Chown Oved

Parisian Riots, Take Two

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:22:22 +0000

This time, it's elite French students who are rejecting government plans

all photos: Marco Chown Oved

PARIS, FRANCE--It's been less than a month since a state of emergency was called during November's riots. There's trouble in Paris again.

For several consecutive nights, French youth have been gathering in the streets, fighting with police, destroying property and setting fires.

But this time the problem comes not from the impoverished suburban minorities, whom French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy recently called "Rascals," but from the cream of French society: students of the prestigious Sorbonne University.

"In November, we saw suburban youth, frustrated by the fact that they couldn't find a job and seemed to have no future, burning cars in the streets. Now, we see the same sentiments being expressed by university students," said Robert Gaignon, a union representative with the Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (FSU).

The issue this time around is the introduction of the CPE, a new category of employment reserved for those under 26 and promising far fewer guarantees than those accorded to other workers in France's protectionist job market.

The CPE, legislation introduced and hurried through government by France's unelected Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who was appointed by the President Jacques Chirac, has been met with strong resistance from unions and students alike. Both complain that the CPE provides an easy way for employers to fire young workers during the first two years of employment. This approach differs greatly from the protection offered to France's other workers.

The government justifies the CPE by explaining that it will make it easier for youth to find a job: Employers will not have to worry about being stuck with student workers for the long term, and will thus be less reluctant to hire new workers, the government claims. The students and unions counter that the contract will create a situation of disposable workers, where employers will simply get rid of cheap young employees every two years instead of giving them a raise and taking them on permanently.

"It's governmental permission to exploit the youth, and then throw them away when you're done," Gaignon explained.

The opposition first displayed its force in demonstrations held on March 7 drawing an estimated one million people throughout the country, with 200,000 marching in Paris, as reported by the FSU.

Since then, things have escalated quickly. On March 10, 45 of France's 84 universities were either occupied, or blockaded by striking students.

The marked escalation to violence occurred when the National Police, dressed in riot gear, stormed the administrative offices of the Sorbonne at 3 a.m. on March 11. The office had been occupied by a group of students since the previous afternoon.

The French press showed little sympathy for police in the eviction, which they described as brutally asymmetrical, pitting hundreds of riot police using tear gas indoors against a group of several hundred students sitting on the floor.

De Villepin stood firm during his March 12 television appearance, stating that, "The law, as passed, stands." While he mentioned that he might consider some additional assurances, the CPE itself was not up for negotiation.

When students showed up for class on Monday morning, they found the Sorbonne, along with several other major Parisian universities, closed and blockaded by lines of riot police barring entry. This created a standoff that has gone on day and night, ever since.

Groups of students have gathered outside of the Sorbonne and Jussieu, another major Parisian university, with violent results. Tear gas and mace have been deployed frequently by police, while the city has been forced to remove the metal grilles around the trees lining the streets in the Latin Quarter after they were used to construct barricades and smash store windows.

"It makes no sense. They won't let us find work, and now they won't let us study!" exclaimed Daniel Bureau, a Sorbonne student among the crowd on March 14. "They've forced thousands of angry students into the streets with nothing to do but fight," he added.

Scenes like this are being repeated across France, with large demonstrations occurring in Toulouse, Lille, Lyon and Marseilles.

"It won't stop tonight, or tomorrow. It's not only here, it's everywhere across France. Since they won't let us go to school, we'll fight them in the streets till they listen!" Bureau threatened.

Many faculties and unions stand behind the student protesters. The faculty of the Sorbonne held their own demonstration on March 15, followed by mass student protests across the country--which again turned violent--during the day on March 16.

"The opponents of the CPE grow ever more numerous," read the headline of Le Parisien on March 17, the day before a crowd of 500,000 people demonstrated in Paris, only a week and a half after the last mass demonstrations. This time, however, hundreds remained after the end of the march, burning three cars and smashing store windows before the gendarmes dispersed the crowd with several volleys of tear gas.

Sixty-eight per cent of the French population is now against the CPE, according to a survey published in Le Monde.

"This is not an isolated event. The Villepin/Sarkozy government is set on making its liberal reforms, regardless of what the people think. Chirac was only elected because he was up against [the extreme right-wing] Le Pen in the last election, but he has used the victory to rule with an iron fist. After the first year, there were regional elections that [his party] the UMP lost badly; then there was the European constitution which failed to win popular support; now, after his appointed PM de Villepin sneaks the CPE through the senate, people are rising up. They're tired of telling him that his policies aren't welcome with a ballot box," Gaignon explained.

For the French government, things continue to worsen. Its popularity has dropped 15 per cent in the last two months, according to the Le Monde, with 46 per cent of those surveyed agreeing that it is "too authoritarian."

After November's three weeks of rioting attuned the world's newspaper readers to government indifference, March's student revolt may be worse than a public relations nightmare: the press here are already making comparisons to May 1968, when 10 million workers and students effectively shut down the state for several weeks.

This spring's events mark the first time that the unions have backed a popular student movement since 1968. But this time around, the alliance between workers and students is not fuelled by ideology, but by "précarité" - the insecurity fuelled by increasing unemployment. And this affinity can be extended to a third group: the disillusioned suburban youth, primarily immigrants and first-generation French citizens.

The unions are behind the students "for one simple reason," Gaignon said. "If you introduce an underclass of workers into the job market without the same guarantees given to everyone else, that weakens the working class as a whole."

For their part, a coalition of unions is threatening a general strike slated for March 23; a strike which could cripple the country's economy.

"Their battle is ours," Gaignon stated matter-of-factly.

The government seems to have inadvertently made things worse for themselves. Through their actions, two traditionally disparate groups--the immigrant and français-de-souche youth--have found common ground: the stark reality of facing a hopeless future without employment or adequate income.

"In November, I couldn't believe that people would burn down a school for any reason, but now, faced with my own systematic discrimination, I'm starting to understand," said Bureau.

While the results of this latest round of violence are yet to be seen--they may simply fizzle out as the November riots did--the palpable discontent found in France's youth today will require far-reaching changes before there is any true calm.

Youth are hitting the streets to do battle with police once again, but Marco Chown Oved finds that this time, it's a different crowd

Protest Burn Out

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:39:10 +0000

Riots around Paris Continue

In areas where cars are being set alight, incomes are 75% below the national average. photo: Marco Chown Oved

As the smog slowly burns off in the morning heat, life in the Parisian suburb of Sevran attempts to go on as if nothing is happening.

People walk to work, or carry their groceries home, but all vehicle transport has come to a near stand-still. The rapid commuter trains are hours late or non existent; the wide boulevards are packed with bumper to bumper traffic.

These "disturbances" – as they have been dubbed by public officials – are the result of the burnt-out vehicles that litter the streets. They are everywhere, smouldering in the early light, silent, but announcing their presence with the pungent smell of burnt rubber.

Every day for the last week the residents of Sevran, along with dozens of other towns in the district of Seine Saint-Denis, have awoken to find these derelict car carcases after gangs of youth set them ablaze during the night.

"Its like the hurricanes," a young woman, who declined to give her name, commented. She stood outside the train station where passers-by have gathered around the skeletal remains of a bus.

"My American friend called from Florida to ask if I was alright!" she added with a laugh.

"Its incredible! Not the violence so much as the cost of it all," said Ms. Gois, who stopped to join the growing crowd by the bus.

Stopping to gawk, many people pull out their cell phones to take a picture and send it to friends. If one can overlook the similarity it bears to the remains of suicide bombings in Israel, the twisted and blackened bus is truly grotesque, but somehow beautiful.

One man, Mr Cheng, was filming and snapping photos at the same time.

"It's my car. But it's going to be hard to convince the insurance company of that. There's nothing left to identify it" he said of his car that now looked more like a pile of scrap metal.

photo: Marco Chown Oved

Besides the low hum of conversation, there is very little noise. This is not the chaotic scene one would expect mere hours after a riot that destroyed, in this reporter's personal count, six cars, a bus, three transport trucks, and a private theatre school in one night.

That can now be added to the official estimate of the more than 500 burnt vehicles in Siene Saint Denis that the police report. This comes after 9 nights of fires in dumpsters, in buildings and in vehicles. There have even been reports of Molotov cocktails thrown at police.

The spark that ignited this nightly chaos is the deaths of two teenagers by electrocution. Stopped for questioning by police the night of October 27th, the two boys fled into what has been identified by the media as a transformer station, pursued by police. The boys were killed after hopping the fence and coming into contact with a structure within.

The police, predictably, have been tight lipped about the incident. First, they denied any involvement whatsoever, and now they admit to having contact with the youths the same night of the incident.

Now these same police have descended into the affected areas in unprecedented numbers. Officials claim 3000 national police have been deployed in Seine Saint-Denis, but the newspaper Liberation is sceptical, stating in an editorial that there must be many more.

Despite their numbers, any effect they have had has been marginal. Each successive night claims more cars than the last.

"The cops do nothing. They come and stand around. They won't even intervene if they see a fire being set" said Walid Al-Sheikh, a witness of the previous night's violence.

"They're afraid. The kids are faster than them and know the streets better" he added.

This hesitation – the government didn't officially comment until the third day of rioting – is endemic to the depressed areas affected. The police have long stayed away, leaving the suburbs to gangs and criminals.

These suburbs – called banlieus – that ring Paris were built in the 60s and 70s to house the influx of immigrants that ballooned after the independence of former French colonies. Hastily constructed, the concrete high rises and crowded tenements sharply contrast the classical architecture just the other side of the periphery – the road that rings Paris proper.

The periphery is more than a physical barrier, separating economically and racially disparate populations. It's a symbolic barrier too: a sort of French Mason-Dixon line that demarcates the geography of desirability.

Jane Kramer, writing in the New Yorker, explains that these banlieus were originally envisioned as transition neighbourhoods for the newly arrived people – who were in large part of North African origin. Yet more than thirty years later many residents remain in their transitional lodging, transforming these weigh-points into racially and economically depressed prisons.

photo: Marco Chown Oved

Now these first arrivals have produced a second generation of French-born black and Arab residents. This is the demographic that is being blamed for the fires, violence and property destruction that now enters its second week.

Kramer adds that these youths don't share the optimism the older generation had upon arrival; they only see the systematic discrimination that has prevented them from integrating into mainstream French life.

Despite the many special programs the government has implemented in these zones, unemployment stands at 19.6 percent - double the national average - and at more than 30 percent among 21- to 29- year-olds, according to official figures. Even more stark is the fact that here, incomes are 75 percent below the national average.

"Its disgusting, what we're doing to ourselves" said Abdul Mohammed outside his home flanked by half a dozen burnt out cars.

Pointing to one of the wrecks, he explains that, "it belongs to my neighbour. Because it was an old car, he had no insurance. Now, he has no car at all."

"The people here cannot afford to take from each other. If these kids are mad at the police, why aren't they burning police cars?" Mohammed asked.

The disturbances have, without a doubt, caught the attention of the French authorities – and, to their consternation, the attention of the world press as well. But without a clear grievance, any sort of articulated communication to the media, or political representation, the rioters have squandered any opportunity they might have had to start meaningful reforms.

Sympathy for them wears thin. First the police and the French government, and now the media and a growing proportion of the public have rejected the legitimacy of the root causes of this unrest. Their rhetoric is almost universally centered on the restoration of order and the apprehension of those responsible for the destruction.

Al-Sheikh predicts an ugly end. "The army will come. They may shoot, yes. But if that's what it takes to end this madness, then it's worth it."