Civil unrest in France

Civil unrest spreads in France: blogs react, mobile tech role

Most of those involved are of African or Arab Muslim origin. The riots have reached Paris, and some out spreading outside of France to Brussels. The rioting stems from the inequalities toward the French Muslims, where they have a very high unemployment rate. President Jacques Chirac doesn't seem to want to try to change something to make the people happy, instead it's just concerned with putting down the riot, and probably pretending nothing happened afterward.

Here, a Parisian blogger shares observations from his aunt, who lives in an area where this activity is taking place. Some are calling it "Baghdad on the Seine".

Her building suffered a fire yesterday night, started by the usual suspects in the neighborhood (they blew up two motorbikes in a local on the ground floor), ignored for almost one hour by the police and firemen. The solidarity of the inhabitants helped to evacuate everybody, and provide temporary shelter while the fire raged. Most people went back home the same evening as the fire was doused eventually.

A few cars were also burnt in the neighborood, but hardly more than usual. It's one of those things that happen and that you don't really worry about if you live there. This week, it goes on TV if you do it, so of course more are tempted to do so (last night saw 1300 cars burn, up from 900 the previous night), including in provincial cities. There is no coordination of anything, it's just mostly copycats by bored kids who are suddenly getting a lot of attention.

[T]hese neighboroods are not ghettos. My aunt lived there most of her life, she was a teacher in a nearby pre-school and has a mostly normal middle class life. There are lots of minorities, lots of kids with dysfunctional families, an obvious lack of jobs, and decrepit buildings, but it's not a rundown place, it's not cut off from the rest of the country, and there is a lot of solidarity between the inhabitants.

This is not to deny that the situation is tense, and that the events of recent nights don't signal some real problems in these neighboroods, but it's not like it's war, ot the "end of France" or a crippling crisis for the country. What it is is a real political crisis for the government...

Snip from one wire service story:

"What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized," arranging attacks through cellphone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs, said a national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon.

Paris, to honour the memory of Frenchman Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec who died in hospital November 7, 2005 from injuries received after being attacked by a hooded youth last week and went into a coma. Rioters shot at police and torched more than 1,400 cars in the worst violence since unrest erupted in France's poor suburbs 11 days ago, and le Chenadec became the first fatality on Monday."

From Boing.