Print this page Race riots expose France's fault lines Emma-Kate Symons, Paris 02nov05 FRANCE has plunged into a bitter debate over the failure to integrate its large Muslim community after five nights of rioting in a Paris suburb populated by North African immigrants. As locals mourned the deaths of two teenage boys rumoured to have died last week while being chased by police, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his vow of zero tolerance against urban violence. But he stood accused of playing into the hands of the extreme Right and National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen by using words such as "scum" to describe violent youths who made life "impossible" on high-rise council estates such as those in Clichy-sous-Bois. Muslim leaders from the northeast Paris suburb have released video evidence they claim proves police threw tear-gas grenades into a suburban mosque on Sunday evening. Worshippers were praying during violent unrest sparked by the death by electrocution of two youths aged 15 and 17 on Thursday evening. Mr Sarkozy is a presidential aspirant who has made his career on a tough law and order stance. Since the riots, he has angered political leaders from his ruling Centre-Right party to the socialist Left, for engaging in "dangerous demagoguery". Arnaud Monteborg, the co-founder of the New Socialist Party, said Mr Sarkozy was "poaching the territory of the extreme Right". "We are ... in the 'Sarko circus'," he said. Minister for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag even chastised his colleague for the use of language such as "scum" to describe the young people of the suburbs. "This is about the absolute failure of integration - we don't offer hope," said Jean-Marc Benamou, journalist and author of a book about the Socialist prime minister Francois Mitterrand. According to the Socialist Party's Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the riots marked "the failure of the politics of Nicolas Sarkozy". But political commentators were divided about the political implications of the high-risk Sarkozy strategy as he fights his party rival Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for the UMP presidential candidacy in 2007. On Thursday night Ziad Benna and Bouna Traore died and a third youth was seriously injured when they sought refuge in an electricity substation. Despite denials by police officials and Mr Sarkozy and Mr de Villepin, friends of the boys said they were being pursued by police after a false accusation of burglary and that they "feared interrogation". More than 70 cars have been torched, dozens of police injured and more than 50 arrests have been made in a running battle between local youths and police over five nights. Extra police and firefighters were dispatched to the troubled suburb and authorities reported an evening of relative calm yesterday, although there were 12 more arrests. The parents of the dead boys refused to meet the Interior Minister when he visited Clichy-sous-Bois, demanding instead a meeting with the Prime Minister. Mr Sarkozy, whose nickname is "le flic" (the cop), has reaffirmed his "total determination" to fight urban violence, which he said had plagued Paris suburbs for 30 years. Earlier this year he was attacked for promising to "clean up the suburbs" - language his critics said was barely coded racist language. Anti-immigrant sentiment is particularly high in France, which is struggling against unemployment of 9.8 per cent. "Marked on the Left by Dominique de Villepin, Sarkozy must capitalise on the Right and even on the Right of the Right," Liberation newspaper commented. Le Monde suggested in an editorial that the Interior Minister was deliberately stirring up tensions to divide France. "The minister believes in the existence of a clear separation between 'them' and 'us'," the newspaper said. But Le Figaro, a staunch supporter of the Gaullist Government and President Jacques Chirac, said the troubles in the Paris suburbs could only be solved by returning to their roots and improving educational opportunities.
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