Paris is Burning: Racism and Repression Explode in Week of Uprisings October/ November 2005
various imcers 05 Nov 2005 09:56 GMT www.indymedia.org

Paris Uprising 2005

Africans living and working in Paris have been pushed into ghettoized suburbs of Paris (banlieue), where the state has withdrawn education, health, and other services, while increasing police presence, checkpoints, raids on sans-papiers and levels of oppression in general. This week the suburbs have exploded.

The trigger came on Thursday, October 27th, 2005, as a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. When police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.

On Saturday morning, 1000 joined in a march organised by religious associations and mosques in Clichy-sous-Bois. Representatives of the Muslim community appealed for calm and marchers wore T-shirts saying mort pour rien ("dead for nothing"). The mayor of Clichy, Claude Dilain, called for an enquiry into the deaths of the two boys. All eyes were on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The response? As people were gathering in the mosques for the Night of Destiny, the most sacred night in the month of Ramadan, a night people usually spent at the mosque, the empty streets of the Cité du Chêne Pointu filled with about 400 CRS militant riot police and gendarmes, blocking off the neighborhood. Yet very few people allowed themselves to be provoked into breaking the sanctity of this night, despite racist insults from the police.

On Sunday, however, provocation turned into outrage as the women's prayer room at de Bousquets mosque was teargassed by police. As people stumbled out gasping for air, the policemen called the women "whores", "bitches" and other insults.

[ Reports from Paris IMC (fr): one | two | three | four ] [ Eyewitness account in English: UK IMC kersplebedeb ]

Ever since that night, Clichy-sous-Bois has been burning, with the insurrection spreading on Monday to Seine-Saint-Denis and on Tuesday night (November 1st) to nine other Parisian suburbs. A week after the death of the two boys, the uprising is spreading throughout France -- to Dijon, Bouches-du-Rhone and Rouen.

In a press conference held on Monday, community-based activists named the causes of the continuing unrest: "Clichy is one of the poorest municipalities in France and community groups have less and less money to work with." Things are tense as the press conference draws to a close: young people share their stories, women explain what they experienced and saw first hand. A common theme in all these accounts is anger at the police, who are carrying out more and more foolish — and often illegal — "muscular" interventions, and at the authorities in the ministry who are not condemning the gas attack against the mosque.

There was a consensus that, in order to calm things down, the police should leave the area... instead, Minister Sarkozy has announced a "zero tolerance" policy, labelling the suburban youth as "scum" and vowing to "clean out" troubled suburbs. Sarkozy's position has divided the cabinet, with Prime Minister de Villepin apparently rebuking Mr Sarkozy.

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French youth face riot police in the Paris suburb of Clichy, October 29, 2005.


A van burns after clashes between French youth and riot police in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Octrober 29, 2005.


Clichy-Sous-Bois residents, some wearing t-shirts reading 'Death for Nothing', as they walk for the peace Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005.


Janitor cleans a destroyed phone booth after riots erupted between youths and security forces
in the Clichy-Sous-Bois suburb of Paris during the night, Friday, Oct. 28, 2005.


at.indymedia.org | 3/11/2005


at.indymedia.org | 3/11/2005


at.indymedia.org | 3/11/2005

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