Emergency Escalates in France
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

PARIS – The emergency meeting of the French president, Jacques Chirac, with his ministers Sunday represents a desperate effort by the government to get ahead of the rioting that for the first time over the weekend penetrated Paris proper, reaching the Place de la Republic in the heart of the capital.
Mr. Chirac, after years of temporizing in respect of Muslim and other North African immigrants, yesterday vowed arrests, trials and punishment for those sowing what he called “violence or fear” across France. His warnings came during a weekend in which, according to the Associated Press, youths set ablaze nearly 1,300 vehicles and torched businesses, schools, and symbols of French authority, including post offices and provincial police stations, late Saturday and early yesterday.
Police clashed with rioters south of the capital last night, the 11th consecutive night of unrest, the AP reported. It quoted the Interior ministry as saying that about 10 police were injured, two seriously, in Grigny in the Essonne region, the Interior LCI television reported that shots from a pellet gun were fired.
The violence took what the AP characterized as “another alarming turn” Saturday night with attacks in the well-guarded French capital. The AP quoted police as saying 35 cars were torched, most on the city’s northern and southern edges. It said that in central Paris, gasoline bombs damaged three cars near Place de la Republique. Residents reported a loud explosion and flames.
“We were very afraid,” Annie Partouche, 55, who watched the cars burning from her apartment window, said. “We were afraid to leave the building.”
When residents in the heart of Paris are talking about being afraid to leave their building, the situation was rapidly reeling toward a major political crisis for the Fifth Republic. Mr. Chirac spoke after a security meeting of his top ministers. “The law must have the last word,” Mr. Chirac said in his first public address on the violence. Those sowing “violence or fear” will be “arrested, judged, and punished.”
The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin promised speedy trials for rioters and extra security where it was needed, according to the AP. It quoted Mr. Chirac as saying France was determined to promote “respect for all, justice, and equal opportunities.” Violence has been concentrated in poor suburbs with large immigrant populations. “But there is a precondition, a priority, I repeat,” he said. “That is the restoring of security and public order.”
The AP reported as follows: The French president had faced criticism from opposition politicians for not publicly speaking about France’s worst civil unrest in more than a decade. His only previous comments came through a spokesman.
From an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects, the violence has fanned out into a nationwide show of disdain for French authority from youths and minorities, most French-born children of Arab and black Africans angered by years of unequal opportunities.
Arsonists burned 1,295 vehicles nationwide overnight Saturday-Sunday – sharply up from 897 the night before, a national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said, adding that police made 349 arrests nationwide.
For a second night, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed Paris suburbs and small teams of police chased rioters speeding from attack to attack in cars and on motorbikes.
“What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized,” arranging attacks through cell phone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs, Mr. Hamon said.
Police also found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a derelict building in Evry south of Paris, with more than 100 bottles ready to turned into bombs, another 50 already prepared, as well as fuel stocks and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces, a senior Justice Ministry official, Jean-Marie Huet, told the Associated Press. Police arrested six people, all under 18.
The discovery Saturday night, he said, shows that gasoline bombs “are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms.”
Police said copycat attacks are fanning the unrest but had no evidence of separate gangs coordinating. Officials said older youths, many already with police records, appear to be teaching younger teens arson techniques.
Unrest extended west to Normandy and south to Nice and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast, with attacks in or around the cities of Lyon, Lille, Marseille, and Strasbourg. In all, 3,300 buses, cars and other vehicles have been incinerated in 10 nights, the police spokesman said.
In Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths who destroyed at least 50 vehicles, shops, and businesses, a post office and two schools, authorities said.
“Rioters attacked us with baseball bats,” a deputy fire chief, Philippe Jofres, told France-2 television. “We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war.”
The rioting erupted October 27 after two teenagers of north African descent were accidentally electrocuted as they hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them. Anger was then fanned anew days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois – the northern suburb where the youths died.
Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials, and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.
From the south of France, Leo McKinstry, writing in the London Telegraph, reports as follows:
Provence has long been regarded as one of the most idyllic regions of France. When we bought a home in the town of Carpentras about 10 miles east of Avignon three years ago we imagined that we were leaving behind us the crime-ridden, strife-torn problems of urban Britain.
But any sense of living in an earthly paradise has been shattered by the wave of anarchy spreading across France.
On the map, we watched the unrest coming ever nearer to Provence. On Friday night it reached Nice and Marseille, which is 80 miles south of us. On Saturday, as we walked through the streets of Carpentras, there was a palpable air of tension in the air. The town has a substantial Muslim population, and it seemed like local residents were preparing for the worst.
Cafes shut, shops locked up early and the local cathedral, normally open throughout daylight hours, had its doors closed. There was a sense that the town was battening down the hatches. On Saturday night, the streets were eerily calm, with hardly any traffic to be seen. The sense of deepening crisis can only have exacerbated the severe racial tensions that exist in places such as Carpentras and Avignon.
On Friday, we had a drink with a neighbor. She expressed her outrage over the behavior of “les Arabes,” who, she said, caused nothing but trouble, never paid their taxes and could not be bothered to work.
But she had nothing but contempt for the National Front led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, fearing that he would only worsen the problems.
It is not an attitude shared by the proprietor of the local Internet cafe across the road who is a passionate supporter of the National Front. He displays the party’s posters on his premises, and recently had his windows kicked in as a result.
But it is a mistake to believe that open racism is widespread. Just as in England, a large swath of the French middle-class like to see themselves as enlightened, taking the theoretical blame for unrest in the migrant communities.
As I write, there is a sudden blare from the sirens of police cars and fire engines in the street outside. Perhaps the contagion of urban violence is about to reach our adopted hometown. Then the Provencal dream really will be over.