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Malaise turning into violence in French suburbs has been building for decades
PARIS (AP) - "Liberty. Equality. Fraternity." Those words inscribed on the lintels of city halls and schools across France are far from a universal truth. The deep malaise exploding into violence across poor French suburbs has been building for decades. Successive job-creation schemes by governments left and right have not taken youths off the streets, out of the clutches of drug dealers, Islamic radicals and dead-ends. Decades of urban redevelopment plans have not rid tougher suburbs of their Third World feel. Some low-cost housing projects that once were seen as models of urban progress, with heating, bathrooms and large apartments, have degenerated into no-go zones where even police ride though without stopping, windows rolled up. Police got extra officers and equipment after France put conservative President Jacques Chirac back in office in 2002, rallying together to keep out the anti-immigration alternative proposed by his far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen. But suburban unrest - 100 cars torched each night on average before the latest riots - is a daily fact of life. To some youths of the ghettos, police are oppressors, not guardians. More often than not, those frisked by police on the Paris Metro, their legs spread, hands against the wall, seem to have black or brown skin. An African-sounding name, a suburban zip code on a resume, the wrong skin-colour can put job interviews, an apartment rental, even entrance into a night club out of reach. Some of the French-born children of African immigrants who fought for France in the Second World War and who put in the labour to get the country back on its feet afterward say they are treated as second-class citizens. French - but not quite. "French society, which was based on the motto 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,' is being transformed into a society ruled by the judiciary, money and law and order," says sociologist Manuel Boucher. Few excuse the violence, not least those in suburbs who have seen livelihoods, gyms, buses and cars - if they're lucky enough to have one - go up in smoke from 10 nights of unrest and are now banding together to protect what is left. In the face of youths lobbing gasoline bombs, unity and firmness are the new mantras of Chirac's government. But before the rioting, it was being distracted from its main mission, bringing down France's nearly 10 per cent unemployment rate, by the ambitions and tensions between its two main players, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. And as it blames the government for problems that it failed to solve when it was in power, the opposition Socialist Party is being careful not to condone the destruction. The spark was the deaths of two teenagers on Oct. 27. The fuel, some in opposition say, was Sarkozy's comment two days before the rioting that neighbourhood troublemakers are "scum." But anger has been simmering for far longer than that. "For 20 or 30 years now we been closing our eyes to the problems of the suburbs," Brice Hortefeux, France's minister for local government and a Sarkozy ally, said Sunday on France-Inter radio. France, he said, "has been practising the policy of an ostrich." © The Canadian Press, 2005