The outsiders in France Rajesh Sharma November 16, 2005
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Night after night, scenes of violence unfolded on television in a real life drama that was as gripping as any TV series. Hooded youth emerged from nowhere at the onset of dusk to torch cars, gymnasiums and schools. Silhouetted against the backdrop of blazing vehicles, the dark night lit up by flames several metres high, the silence of the autumn evening shattered by the sound of bursting tyres, they would pause a moment to relish their success, sometimes doing a joyous war dance. Another car burnt, another trophy added and another thumbing of the nose at the police force. Was this a game of no-holds barred cops and robbers or a declaration of war on the government?

It was very serious business, as the authorities were to discover. The violence was triggered by the accidental electrocution of two coloured and, by all accounts, regular and popular high school students in an electric sub-station where they sought to hide from a surprise police roadblock on their return from a soccer game. They feared the worst as they had left their identity papers at home rather than take them to the playing field.

The spontaneous burst of violence that began as a protest-cum-show-of-solidarity in a north-east suburb of Paris quickly spread its tentacles to surrounding suburbs and then, spiralled across France like an out-of-control spinning top, engulfing all major towns and cities, even Paris itself. The extremely popular area of the Marais and the upscale 17th district were also struck. Cars were set on fire everyday by the hundreds — 315 on the seventh day, 596 on the eighth and 897 on the ninth. It seemed never ending. Policing was intensified in sensitive areas and knots of policemen could be seen standing and watching at a distance — totally powerless against small gangs of youngsters, some as young as 13, who seemed hell-bent on creating anarchy. The eleventh night of rioting was the worst when 269 towns reported 1,408 arson attacks on private cars and public buses as well as buildings.

It seemed astounding that a developed country with a highly trained police force seemed incapable of controlling this arson by kids. Actually, apart from the elite riot police, the CRS, which is more experienced, the average French gendarme who, as a rule, always operates with a couple of colleagues, did not know how to react to this entirely new experience. The situation was compounded by strict orders to exercise restraint. This was an attempt to take the edge off the public anger that had flared to a new high when the interior minister labelled the rioters “riff-raff” and promised to cleanse these areas of the scum. To onlookers, the government response seemed ineffectual at best. Meetings of the cabinet, local councils and eminent political leaders hashed and re-hashed the issue while social workers and Left-wing politicians adopted a ‘we warned you’ stance.

In a preliminary response to ease the situation, the government reversed budgetary cuts, promised several long-term corrective measures and declared its intention to be tough but just. All these announcements did not make the slightest dent on the nightly burning that continued unabated, with calls to burn vehicles and defy the police brazenly launched from websites and photos of blazing cars sent as triumphant souvenirs via mobile phones. Such was the spate of violence that some television channels, in a bid to contain the violence, decided on a kind of self-censorship, allowing the public to wait for the following day’s newspapers to get the figures of the damage.

Curfew, which seemed a logical solution, was not considered an option because of the painful memories of the Algerian war of independence that it was sure to revive. However, on November 8, the government reluctantly declared a state of emergency which allowed mayors to declare a curfew, restricting the movements of unaccompanied minors.

This had an immediate impact on the rioting, which came down but did not grind to a halt. By November 13, the 17th day of violence, over 8,500 vehicles had been destroyed all over the country, 2,500 arrests made and the cost of the damage estimated at over 200 million euros.

However, the damage to the relationship between the government and the North African and West African immigrant community is incalculable. Yet, like a festering sore that is better to treat rather than hide from sight, the upside of this unfortunate violence is that like it or not, the problem is out in the open and can no longer be swept under the carpet of neglect.

Mistrust, hostility, resentment and fear have long characterised relations between the authorities and the angry young men of the suburbs. These areas are dotted with high-rise low-cost complexes, dismissively called Cités, on the outskirts of major towns in France. They were constructed 40 to 50 years ago to house labour imported from the former French colonies to man factories and do menial jobs that the French found demeaning. These buildings were located in distant suburbs, far removed from the public eye with inadequate transportation and a striking lack of infrastructure. These are often termed ‘dormitory cities’, given the time people spend reaching them from their place of work.

Today, the same Cités have turned into sinister human warehouses, where mainly Arab and Black families live cheek-by-jowl in small flats in ghetto-like conditions. The second generation immigrants that inhabit these concrete towers are the lost children of France, not considered French by the French and viewed as outsiders by their country of origin. The quest for an identity of their own makes them turn to others of their ilk, with belonging to a gang becoming the hub of their existence and ‘verlan’, French slang spoken backwards, their hallmark.

The deeper the involvement with the gang, the stronger the pressure to defy parental control, to loaf around all day long, neglect schoolwork until they drop out of school altogether. Add to this the unspoken but acutely felt racial discrimination at the hands of the police who, though admirably restrained for the most part in this particular unrest, are known to crack down harder on these ‘immigrant’ youth. Coupled with this is the job discrimination against even qualified Arabs and Blacks whose name and Cité address is like a tell-tale black mark that no amount of diplomas can hide. The unemployment figure for these young people is as high as 40 per cent. The anger, disillusionment and racial tensions simmering in the immigrant districts have to be addressed and solutions found. It is a crisis of the educational system, a crisis of France’s social economic model and definitely, a crisis of its model of integration.

For France, this social unrest is in the nature of a wake-up call to move beyond paying mere lip-service to the Republican values of equality and fraternity, to correct the warped situation through some element of positive discrimination to which the French social model is for the time being highly resistant. Treating the immigrant as a second-class citizen is a mindset that can only be changed slowly over generations by radically improving the economic and educational level of the immigrant as well as by instilling, among other segments of the population, an appreciation of the Other. It is no longer a matter of choice but one of utmost urgency, for the situation is like a powder keg waiting to explode.

Sitaram Yechury’s fortnightly column, Left-Hand Drive, will appear on Saturday. He is travelling abroad

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