Nov 7, 2005
The Straits Times
Aulnay-Sous-Bois (FRANCE) - FRANCE is struggling to pin down the
cause of the Paris riots as urban violence scaled new heights with
gangs of youths torching cars, shops and firms despite heavy
security reinforcements.
The discovery of a petrol bomb-making factory in a southern suburb
of the city, with more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods
for hiding rioters' faces, added to fears that organised gangs were
behind the attacks.
Six youths, all aged under 18, were arrested in the raid on
Saturday night on a building in Evry, south of Paris, where the
petrol bombs were being made, said director of criminal affairs and
pardons Jean-Marie Huet.
The discovery, the director said, showed that petrol bombs being
used by rioters 'are not being improvised by kids in their
bathrooms'.
Youths have also been found using cellphones to relay police
movements and Internet blogs to urge unrest elsewhere.
Some 2,300 police have been deployed in the Paris region to bolster
security.
And for the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with
spotlights and video cameras combed the poor, heavily immigrant
Seine-Saint-Denis region, north-east of Paris, where the violence
has been concentrated. The violence has spread west to the rolling
fields of Normandy and south to resort cities on the
Mediterranean.
Those working in some of the affected areas said many rioters were
school dropouts or unemployed, with some from fatherless
homes.
Ms Sonia Imloul, who works with troubled teens in
Seine-Saint-Denis, said youths often felt trapped.
'It is very, very difficult to leave this place,' she said.
'There is a stigma attached to being a resident of this
place.'
Families break down in the pressure cooker of suburban crime,
poverty and unemployment. Many single mothers are left to fend for
themselves, said Ms Imloul, a single mother herself.
'Fathers do not play any role in their children's lives.'
She said 40 per cent of families in the suburbs where she works are
dysfunctional, which explains the high rate of school dropouts,
drug use and trafficking, petty crimes and aggressive
behaviour.
'Those who set fire to cars and buildings are not criminals. They
are young kids. What are 12-year-olds doing in the streets at
midnight? Parents have no control over them.'
But others blame racism from the larger society for driving the
youths of immigrant parents to burn cars and cause mayhem in the
place where they were born.
Hardline law-and-order policies from Interior Minister Nicolas
Sarkozy have also been accused of fuelling anger in the mainly
immigrant estates where the trouble has spread. But the minister
has insisted the violence was being orchestrated by unknown
ringleaders.
Police union leader Bruno Beschizza also said the riots were 'a
form of urban terrorism led by a minority of kingpins who have a
financial interest, such as drug trafficking, or an ideological one
such as Islamic radicals'.
Many residents seemed to agree with Mr Sarkozy that the rioters
were 'scum'.
'You should see these hooligans in the morning,' said Ms Genevieve
Bourgognat, who watched from her eighth-floor flat as a social club
burned below.
'They come back to survey what they did and they are proud of it.
They show their friends. They boast they got on television.'
Consultant Henri Huynh searched for the best way to describe
them.
'They are like dogs - they bite anything in their way,' he finally
said. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS,AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
