Chirac warning fails to quell French riots
By Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent
Mon Nov 7, 9:40 AM ET
As violent disturbances intensified Sunday in cities across France, President Jacques Chirac said restoring public order and security was his government's "absolute priority."
Chirac, who has been nearly invisible during 11 days of the worst unrest France has experienced since the student protests of 1968, warned that "those who want to sow violence of fear, they will be arrested, judged and punished."
But his words did little to deter the angry young men who live in the squalid housing projects that ring the outskirts of Paris, Nantes, Orleans, Rennes, Rouen and other cities. As darkness settled, they were out again in force, setting fire to cars, buses and shops, terrorizing their neighborhoods and reveling in self-destructive violence.
Rioters armed with bricks, baseball bats and Molotov cocktails clashed with police in the southern city of Toulouse.
In St. Etienne, a city in central France, rioters attacked a bus, forcing the passengers off before setting it on fire. The driver and one passenger were injured. City officials announced they were shutting down public transport until further notice.
Near Paris, the violence spread to the southern suburb of Grigny, where rioters allegedly shot at police with hunting rifles, according to French television. Two policemen were reported to have been hospitalized with serious injuries.
More arrests, more torching
Since the trouble began, at least 800 people have been arrested and 3,500 to 4,000 vehicles have been torched, mostly in the outlying districts of Paris, according to the unofficial tallies of various news outlets.
By midnight Sunday, another 95 people had been arrested and another 528 cars had been set ablaze across the country, according to police.
Residents of some communities hit by the violence have started to set up neighborhood patrols to protect schools and businesses.
"We are at the point now where we have to call in the army," one beleaguered shopkeeper in Paris told French television.
The rioting was triggered by an Oct. 27 incident in which two immigrant teenagers who thought they were being chased by police were electrocuted when they tried to hide in a power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
The nightly violence spreading across France has become emblematic of the anger and alienation of the country's large Arab and black African immigrant communities whose members complain that they are trapped in a no-hope cycle of unemployment, poverty and discrimination.
Rioters Internet-savvy
Although the violence appears to be spontaneous and the perpetrators seem to have no agenda other then to vent their frustrations, their tactics have become more sophisticated. Small gangs use mobile phones to communicate with each other and motor scooters to evade police.
The Internet has become an important instrument of incitement.
Over the weekend, an Internet blogger posted a video clip that appeared to show two plainclothes policemen shooting at a group of young men who had done nothing obvious to provoke them. There was no indication of when or where the video was made, or whether it was genuine, but it hardly mattered to the young men who see the police as the enemy.
"Now you will understand why we have to break the police," one blogger said.
"We are going to do what has to be done," vowed another who signed himself as Safah.
In the affluent and heavily patrolled areas of central Paris, where 51 cars were vandalized Saturday night, authorities feared the violence could spread to attacks on people.
Even more disturbing was the discovery of a gasoline bombmaking factory in a derelict building in Evry, south of Paris. Police found more than 100 bottles ready to be turned into bombs, another 50 already prepared, as well as fuel stocks and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, senior Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet told The Associated Press. Police arrested six people, all under age 18.
On Sunday evening, Chirac, facing the gravest crisis of his presidency, called an emergency meeting of his top ministers.
"The law must have the last word," he said in his first public comments on the violence. He said that "certain decisions" had been taken to strengthen the police response, but he did not elaborate.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised that a range of new security measures to deal with the crisis would be announced soon.
