Fewer Arrests in France, but Urban Violence Is Branded ‘Catastrophic’ as City Halls Come Under Increasing Attack

Fewer arrests were made on Sunday after five days of riots and looting that rocked France following the shooting death of a teenager by a police officer, but tensions are high with widespread incidents of looting and torching of cars. Even some French city halls are coming under attack. Police overnight Sunday made 157 arrests, a drop following 700 arrests the night before. The grandmother of the slain youth named only as Nahel appealed for calm, urging French youths to “stop smashing windows, stop attacking schools and buses.” As the week began, though, anxious French were wondering if calm will prevail.Underscoring the depth of anger in the streets, the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a suburban town on the outskirts of Paris, was targeted in a car-ramming attack on his home on Saturday night. The mayor, Vincent Jeanbrun, called the attack, in which his wife and one of two young children were injured, “an unspeakably cowardly assassination attempt.” Mr. Jeanbrun’s wife, who the press is reporting may have been targeted on account of her membership in the center-right French Republican Party, suffered a broken leg in the attack. At a press conference the local public prosecutor, Stéphane Hardouin, said that “initial findings lead us to believe that the vehicle was launched to burn down the bungalow,” adding that “an accelerant was discovered in a Coke bottle.”The prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, visited L’Haÿ-les-Roses on today and said that “We’re not going to leave you alone, we’re going to stand by the mayors, including mayors who have problems supporting young people during the holidays.” Ms. Borne also said the government had been working for months on the issues of violence against elected representatives, without specifying what it could do to reduce the threats.The head of the Association of French Mayors told Agence France-Presse that 150 town halls have been attacked since last Tuesday, the day that 17-year-old Nahel was shot by a police officer at Nanterre outside Paris. Barbed wire has subsequently been placed outside several town halls in a bid to thwart potential attacks. French mayors called for residents and elected officials to gather at city halls at noon on Monday as a show of unity in the face of the stream of violent incidents that has rattled French cities from Marseille in the south to Lille in the north. Paris has also been impacted, with thousands of additional police officers and special forces deployed in a bid to keep a lid on the rioting. Public transportation at night has been curtailed in the French capital region, prompting the British government to warn travelers of potential disruptions. The State Department’s “Level Two” advisory to “Exercise increased caution in France due to terrorism and civil unrest” has remained unchanged since last year. However, according to the newspaper Le Parisien, French tourism professionals are describing the impact of the violence at the height of the summer travel season as “catastrophic.”A retired French travel agent told this correspondent that the youth anger has been stewing for years in French cities and that it came as no surprise that it erupted. He said that even if the situation calms down in the coming days, without systemic changes France will remain a “powder keg.”President Macron has reached for some low-hanging fruit in a bid to distance his government from responsibility for the riots, blaming video games and social media for playing a “considerable role” in driving copycat attacks across the country. Over the weekend the justice minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti, warned that people using apps like Snapchat and Tiktok to call for violence could face prosecution. In the meantime, Mr. Macron called off a state visit to Germany in order to helm a crisis meeting at Paris. This was doubly embarrassing for the French leader, because last March Charles III canceled a state visit to France in the wake of domestic unrest that followed the passage of an unpopular pension reform bill. At one meeting, Mr. Macron urged his ministers to “do everything they can” to restore some semblance of public order in the cities and towns of France, but it is something of a vicious circle. Images of police officers dragging along the pavement youths who were caught in acts of vandalism or attacking the police are invariably shared on news broadcasts and across social media, exacerbating an already tense atmosphere.A spokesman for the opposition National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, Sebastien Chenu, thinks Mr. Macron is not doing enough. “Right now we’re at the bottom of a cliff and we need to be extremely tough,” Mr. Chenu told the French television station LCI. Before the weekend, he called for imposing a nationwide state of emergency, a politically damaging move that Mr. Macron has so far been able to avoid. The last time a state of emergency was called was in 2005 after two weeks of clashes between French youths and police in suburbs mainly around Paris. The recent surge in violence has gripped far more cities, posing both security and political challenges. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Macron, increasingly viewed as ineffectual and elitist, can surmount them.

Fewer Arrests in France, but Urban Violence Is Branded ‘Catastrophic’ as City Halls Come Under Increasing Attack

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