Does anyone know if they have declared a curfew yet and if they are trying to enforce it? This seems to me to be the first thing to do in these situations but it is really hard to get any information on what is happening in France right now. After a couple of weeks I would think a lot of areas would be under martial law but I haven’t heard anything in the news about the the response of the government.
I have also heard that there are areas where the cops can’t go and that this has been the case even before the riots. Is this true or not?
As far as I know, no. But, believe it or not, I only heard about these riots for the first time yesterday on the Straight Dope, so it’s not like I’m perfectly well-informed.
Such statements have been made for a long time, but to what extent they’re truthful is unclear to me. It seems there may be areas where cops are reluctant to go to. At least, there are definitely areas where cops (and actually even firefighters or medical emergency teams) have been regularily targeted in various nasty ways when they showed up.
Clairobscur are you still in Paris as it says in your “location” tag? You are right that it would be hard to believe that something like this could go on for 9-10 days(?) without someone in Paris knowing about it. I could see if it were isolated but they are saying the number of cars that have been burned are in the hundreds at least and the map I saw showed incidents occurring over a wide geographic area.
I would guess maybe that you aren’t in Paris currently? Surely the press in France is giving it a lot coverage… aren’t they?
I heard an interview with a senior police official in Paris on the radio this morning. Curfews, he seemed to say, were not considered viable, because so many other law abiding people are out in those neighborhoods at that time of night. He didn’t mention martial law but it sounds like overkill - we’re talking about jobless teenagers torching cars. It’s not like the end of civilization.
Currently, curfew has only been declared in the Paris suburb of Raincy, best known for its famous Notre-Dame du Raincy church. Hopefully this will aid the police there.
It’s true that these riots aren’t particularly serious, lacking agenda, leaders and most importantly public support. Still I’d like to see some stricter measures introduced: it’s not in any way acceptable that these barbarians are rampaging every single night for two weeks terrorizing their neighbours, who are just as poor but just happen to be honest law-abiding citizens. Every night of further school burning and destroying ambulances just adds to the suffering of the decent immigrants, while lowering the world’s opinion of Muslims.
I recently heard that many people have been injured and one killed. This rioting is getting out of hand. They are using guns and France should respond with guns. Get tough!
Yes, I still live in Paris. But these riots are happening in the subburbs, and I had not followed any news for a couple weeks. Everything is perfectly normal in my neighborhood. I actually had heard a couple comments but not being aware of what was happening I assumed there were references to some isolated incident.
It’s not isolated, but it’s still localized. It spread to a larger number of towns, but essentially always in some specific neighboroods already known for being rather unsafe.
I don’t know about that. I imagine that if you live in one of those neighborhoods you might have a different impression of whether the particular civilization you are living in is ending. Cars (in the thousands) and government buildings are being burned. Rescue workers are being attacked, police shot at and there is no rule of law to protect you as you go about your business. None of that sounds very civilized to me. Riots are almost by definition an attack on civilization so it is not unreasonable that steps be taken to put an end to the unrest, with a curfew being the mildest response commonly implemented when rioting persists over a protracted period of time.
At any rate, the French have apparently decided to take a few tentative steps towards quelling the disturbances (including curfews). I wish them luck and hope it is not too little too late.
I must say that in these kind of disfranchised neighborhood, such events happened on a regular basis sporadically. It’s by no way a new, unexpected, issue. Except for the scale of it this time. Car have been torched on a regular basis before. Rescue workers attacked, residents have been complaining about the lack of rule of law, etc… The lack of effective response to these problems (be it atempts to seriously restore law and order or attempts to find a solution to the root problems these young people are facing) was a shame.
For instance, I saw last night the prime minister stating genuinely (at last he’s been honest) : “we’ve reduced public funding to local associations working on social issues like housing, providing support to youths, mediating, etc… We’re going to restore this funding”. I thought “No shit! It’s notorious that these kind of local associations work proved to be the most effective at helping solve the issues. Like you needed large scale riots to have this bright idea”. Similarily, despite his strong rethoric about cleaning up the mess in these areas, the interior minister Sarkozy didn’t do much (except a couple time, in largely mediatized operations, with him and the TV cameras present, with few results but a lot of inflammatory words used) to actually restore law and order there on a permanent basis. They’re also going to work on the social integration of these youths. Like once again nobody was aware it was a major issue (By the way, I’ve the feeling it’s too late for a large number of them and they will be nearly impossible to integrate).
So, they have been notorious, frequently covered by the medias problems for many years (both the thughish behavior of part of the young population in these neighborhoods and the huge problems this population face). The fact that it required large scale riots for the government to decide it will be seriously working on it is shameful (and I’m not convinced at all they will actually implement long term and effective policies). If they actually do something useful, maybe these riots will have served an useful purpose.