BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Polish Culture Paris riots

The riots started over a week ago in a poor muslim neighborhood after two teens died escaping from the police - trying to hide somewhere the high voltage power poll.

The riots last dangerously long!

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France Nov 3, 2005 � A week of riots in poor neighborhoods outside Paris gained dangerous new momentum Thursday, with youths shooting at police and firefighters and attacking trains and symbols of the French state.

Facing mounting criticism, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed to restore order as the violence that erupted Oct. 27 spread to at least 20 towns, highlighting the frustration simmering in housing projects that are home to many North African immigrants.

Unrest flared for an eighth straight night Thursday, though scaled down from previous says. Young men fire buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, while a group of 30 to 40 harassed police near a synagogue further east in Stains, said the top official of Seine-Saint-Denis, Prefect Jean-Francois Cordet.

Jaga,

The developments are very disturbing and dangerous.
The riots and anarchy is continuing for many days now.
There is a huge rage against the French authorities in the
banlieus, the poor neighbourhoods outside French large
cities. Both criminal gangs and radical islamists use the
exsisting anargy in those area's to recruite youth.
It is a scarry devellopment in a country with 5 million
muslims (5% of the 50 million french).
I fear that the same circumstances are recognisable in Belgium,
the Netherlands, Germany and Great-Brittian.
There were again huge riots in Brighton recently, this
time between Asian Muslims and black immigrants.
I wonder how the uproar will devellop further in France.

Pieter

After 8 days of minority riots, this only now gets mentioned on this forum: sad but predictable.

Piwo, why should this particular forum be faster to talk about these riots than the media?

Media has been talking about it.
You were pretty quick to open up commentary on minority riots in New Orleans (less then one full day after the huricane hit).

http://forums.bellaonline.com/showflat.p...=1&vc=1

Took eight days for Paris riots to be mentioned. First mention I've heard on the "Brighton" riots. The media has shown the riots, but I only comment on the defening silence from the forum that had plenty of condemnattion for America and its society beggining on the 1st day after a city was almost entirely destroyed, with more threads opened up in Mid september.

It's just an observation. No malice intended, just an observation. My country of 300 million has more minority riots then England or Paris, who have a fraction of the minority population, and overall population for that matter.

Civil unrest is unpleasant given any circumstance. It rocks you the the foundation that no matter how things seem at the surface, you may be only a single incident from lawlessness and anarchy.

Piwo,

if you see something interesting in the media, just post a message here with the information. We are not a press agency here. This is not even my forum anymore <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Jeepers, Piwo, as Jaga said, we are not a news agency.

I live near Boston and today (Friday) was the FIRST day our media mentioned these riots. My husband listens to news radio,as well as reading the newspapers, and he said that today (Friday) was the first he had heard of this as well.

Perhaps you are in some better informed area?

Perhaps the US media responds faster to US disasters than to problems in France???

To repeat what Jaga said, perhaps you - <img src="/images/graemlins/king.gif" alt="" /> - should keep us up-to-date and open the discussion in a timely manner.

It's amazing...

The other day, a Russian TV crew was attacked by some of the rioters. The reporter was screaming at them, "Nous sommes Russes", but the rioters at this point didn't seem to care WHO they were attacking, just so long as they were attacking somebody. This was shown on the news program "Vremya" last night.

Also, it is the top story in EuroNews, of course.

Eric,

The day before yesterday a Flemish (Duch speaking) televion crew was also attacked by the rioters. There is total anarchy overthere, and people allready compare the situation with 1968, the violent student revoltion agianst the Gaule governement at that time. The french authorities lost controle, in Paris new Police troops were launched in the troubled area's.
The violence has spread to other "Banlieus" of other cities, and now the violence spread to commercial zones. Factories, a builiding where busses for public transport were stalled (manny busses) and 1200 cars were burnt down.
French workers and middle class are losing jobs now and property which was burnt down. There is a climate of fear amongst common french, where this development is going to. People fear that political motivations are behind it and the Islamic fundementalists want political power and criminal organisations want autonomous zones. A french crime investigator said on Duch television that there are now autonomous zones of Islamic and African immigrants mixed with the french pour whites (the farmers who moved to the subburbs which are burning now).
The men said that the french government for to long ignored the deplorable situation in the banlieus, where chronic unemployment, crime and poverty ruled for decades. The French are xenophobic people on one side, but in the same time the Algerians and African immigrants speak less and less french and are as xenophobe as their native french European neighbours.
A problem of the riots is that there is a generation conflict in it, radicalised youth agianst the police, and a religious conflict, Islam against the French state. You see that some of the rioters are hostile to everyone who is not Muslim (Muselmane). And keep in mind that Marocco, Algeria and Tunesia were french colonies. And in the sixtees there was a very bloody independance war in Algeria between the french and the Algerian resistance fighters of the FLN. The cruel and saddistism of both side in that war made many scars, which are stil not totally healed. Add to that the civil war in Algeria of the last decade between the Islamist terrorist butchers who slaughtered manny civilians and the counter terror of the Algerian Military regime, and you see out of what kind of heritage those rioters come.
Many Salafists (Algerian Islamist militants with links to Al-Qiada and Afghanistan -Islamic resistance against the Sovjet-Union in the eightees,
and the civil war between the war lords after that. In the Arab world "Afghans"
are called the Mulsims who went on "Jihad" in Afghanistan) fled to France and
found a save harbour in those banlieus, where the french authorities were invisible.

Pieter

A refreshing way to look at the news:
www.buzztracker.org/