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Trouble In The Suburbs (Again)
Rioting has flared up once again in some of the bleak suburbs surrounding Paris. Over a hundred youths, some armed with baseball bats, went on rampage in what cops describe as the worst rioting since last autumn. As if that wasn't enough, liberal groups are questioning why an anti-Semitic "black power" group was allowed to march through the city's oldest Jewish quartier.
The trouble began in Montfermeil, several kilometres north of the city centre, on Monday night. Reports claim the area has been tense since April, when the town's centre-right mayor, Xavier Lemoine, introduced anti-delinquency measures intended to combat sporadic violence and youth crime in the area. During November's riots, Lemoine attempted to slap a curfew of youngsters - his action was condemned by human rights groups and was scrapped after it failed to meet a challenge in court.
Since gaining notoriety among hoodlums and France's human rights industry for his tough line, Lemoine has been targeted by thugs. His family and home have been attacked and his house has been placed under police protection following one incident last month, when rocks were thrown at the Mayor's home.
The latest violence is also linked to the campaign against Lemoine. According to the Mayor's office, trouble flared up on Monday after police arrested a youth for attacking a bus driver. Lemoine was a witness to the attack, and gave information to the police. Newspapers report that the town's left-wing council blames the trouble on "heavy-handed policing" - some accounts claim that the attacker's mother was also arrested when she protested against her son's arrest. A crowd later attacked the Town Hall and marched on the Mayor's home, throwing stones and shaking the railings. "Tonight's violence showed that the lives of my family and my seven children are in danger," Lemoine told reporters on Tuesday.
Rioting spread to the local police station too, where four officers were wounded defending the station from the mob. The Herald Tribune reports that 250 police were deployed to halt the riots and to prevent them spreading to nearby estates.
In an interesting twist, the Times reports that one Muhittin Altun had his collar felt by police, and is being held on the allegation that he threw rocks in the riots. Altun was one of the three youths who fled from police last October and hid in an electricity substation - his companions were electrocuted, and their deaths were blamed for provoking the riots which led to a state of emergency being declared in France last Autumn.
The riots have raised worries that France faces a long hot summer of violence. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose hard line against the riots has made him more loathed than even Lemoine among the troublemakers of northern Paris, has promised to crack down on the riots once again. He dismissed claims that the riots were a spontaneous response to policing measures, noting that the hundred rioters who set upon cops on Monday night were already masked and armed. As for the complaints that arresting officers provoked the riots, Sarkozy replied "by battling delinquency, we have upset some of the delinquents".
In an unrelated incident, officials are moving quickly to defuse tensions between Paris's black and Jewish community following a march by a "Black Power" group along the city's rue des Rosiers - since medieval times, the heart of France's Jewish community.
Newspapers report that between 20 and 30 members of the extremist Tribu Ka group terrorised shoppers and businessmen on the rue des Rosiers on Sunday evening.
According to France's main anti-Semitism body, the Tribu-Ka mob gave Nazi salutes and screamed "Death to Jews" as they marched along the street, which is in the heart of the city centre's historic Marais quartier. Some reports suggest they stormed shops and cafés in a search for members of the Betar and Jewish Defence League groups, whom Tribu Ka accuses of assaulting a black man during marches to commemorate Ilan Halimi, the young Jewish man kidnapped and tortured to death by a largely black gang in February.
Some reports say that the Tribu Ka threatened to return every Sunday.
Residents and regular visitors to the Rue des Rosiers are used to threats from anti-Semitic groups: The worst attack in recent years was a bomb and gun attack on the Goldenberg restaurant in August 1982, which killed six and injured twenty. The attack was blamed on a faction of the Palestinian Fatah group led by terrorist Abu Nidal.
The Tribu Ka group, which follows the teachings of radical Nation of Islam preacher Louis Farrakhan, has been identified as a rallying point for black extremism in France.
