Neighbours urge calm after riots in Paris suburb
swissinfo | October 29, 2005 1:20 PM
Neighbours urge calm after riots in Paris suburb By Laure Bretton PARIS (Reuters) - Several hundred people marched silently through a Paris suburb on Saturday to pay their respects to two teenagers whose deaths sparked two nights of rioting. The two boys were killed and a third seriously injured on Thursday night when they were electrocuted in an electricity sub station as they ran away from police investigating a break-in, officials said. Following their deaths, hundreds of youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in the Clichy-Sous-Bois suburb. Firefighters went into action around 40 times on Friday night in the northeastern suburb where many of the 28,000 residents are African immigrants, police and fire officers said. After the violence, several hundred took part in a silent march to honour the two dead teenagers, some wearing T-shirts reading "Dead for nothing". "Thanks to you, France will now respect us more than this morning, before this silent march," said Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-Sous-Bois, a neighbourhood of high-rise public housing projects. "We are showing our real face, that of united citizens, whatever our origin or religion or faith," he said at the march, where the victims' families appealed for calm among local young people. During Friday night, unidentified youths fired a shot at police but no one was hurt, police said. "It's not normal that these two should die like that," one teenage boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt told French television, referring to the two dead boys, which media identified as 15-year-old Banou and 17-year-old Ziad. LOBBING STONES Television pictures showed youths lobbing stones at police while cars burnt on the streets of the suburb. Officers in riot gear chased some youths down an alleyway. Around 19 people were detained and 15 police officers and one journalist injured, police said. They were unable to give figures for the number of protesters hurt. An officer from the police trade union Action Police CFTC said the army should be brought in to support the police. "There's a civil war under way in Clichy-Sous-Bois at the moment," Michel Thooris from Action Police CFTC, said. "My colleagues are not equipped or trained for street fighting." However, Joaquin Masanet from the UNSA-Police union, which represents the majority of riot police, did not agree. "We're not at war," he said. "The police are capable of restoring order if we are given the equipment and the manpower." Prosecutor Francois Molins said the three boys had fled from police at the scene of a break-in. "They started to run because the other youths were running. The three adolescents in question were not in trouble with police. They were not delinquents. They thought they were being chased but that was not the case," he said. On Thursday night, youths set cars and garbage cans ablaze and attacked shops and a fire station. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose law and order policies have been criticised by human rights groups, launched a new drive against crime this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 tough neighbourhoods in cities across France. Sarkozy, who has ambitions to run for president in 2007, made his name by cutting headline crime figures during his first stint as interior minister from 2002 to 2004. (Additional reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich)
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