First Published 2005-11-07, Last Updated 2005-11-07 12:50:25 Sarkozy's rhetoric caused uproar among youths in the suburbs Rivalry between neighbourhood youths in French riots Impoverished neighbourhood youths try to outdo each other in riots that have shaken Paris, other cities. By Isabelle Ligner - LES MUREAUX, France French authorities may be talking about "organised gangs" behind the violence that has shaken Paris and other cities for more than a week, but youths in the suburbs say the unrest is spreading mainly because of a sense of competition between the impoverished neighbourhoods. "We see what the others are up to on TV and we try to match them," one French teenager of Malian background, Moussa, said. He says he and a dozen friends have gotten together every night since the rampages started a week and a half ago to sit around a television in their public housing estate in the western Paris suburb of Les Mureaux, "like for a football game". All dress alike, in brand-name sneakers, baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts - the uniform of these grim areas where role models tend to be the US rapper 50 Cent and other mediatised American 'toughs'. "We're trippin' to see all them flames on the TV," says one of them, Youssef. "The 9-3 (the postcode of the northern Paris region at the epicentre of the violence), I don't know it, never leave my 'hood except to go to Algeria. But we're keeping up with the guys from Seine-Saint-Denis on the tube (television), and all the channels show the pics, even the Arab stations on satellite." "We challenge each other like that," says Mamdou, a 19-year-old-Malian who boasts of participating in the rioting with his younger brothers. "If the guys in Clichy torch 15 cars, we gotta do better. But we never leave the 'hood." The youths say they're not "caids" - an Arabic word for leader that means small-time crime boss in the suburbs - and explain that the troubles are damaging the illicit trade in drugs and stolen items that is usually rife. "The caids, they don't like it that the cops are here. They ain't laughin' right now," smirks Youssef. But Moussa says the aim of the violence is to score points, like on the PlayStation consoles they play. "If we get on the TV, if they say we stoned the cops, for us that's a victory, a way to show we're men, like the rituals in Mali," he says. The television also serves to provoke the youths to anger whenever it shows images of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is widely loathed in the suburbs for his hardline policing orders for the areas and rhetoric that has included calling delinquents there "rabble". "We see Sarko's (Sarkozy's) face all the time on the tube, that just gets me worked up. I want to burn everything when I hear him spit on us. The rabble, that's him," another of the group, Jean-Jacques, bursts out. Gangs in the suburbs, usually rivals with those from neighbouring zones, have put aside animosities to direct all their fury at police, whom they blame for the electrocution of two teenagers in the tough northeast district of Clichy-sous-Bois. That incident, on October 27, sparked the riots. The two teenagers, a 15-year-old of Malian origin and a 17-year-old of Tunisian background, died when they tried to hide in an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check. "I don't like the gangs in Chanteloup (a suburb next to Les Mureaux), I don't know anyone in Clichy, but we're all in the same situation. We aren't the right colour, we don't have the right religion. We have no future, no jobs," says Jean-Jacques, a Muslim like the others. "That's why we understand each other and get on without knowing each other." Mobile telephone text messages are occasionally used to communicate with the "cousins" in the other suburbs and sometimes in other cities around France. Mamdou sends a message that reads: "Wotcha burng 2nite?" (What are you burning tonight?). The response comes back: "All we can and more."
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