Immigration Rioting youths burn hundreds of cars in France

[Wang]

Rioting youths burn hundreds of cars in France

Updated: 9:35 p.m. ET Oct. 28, 2006

Authorities upbeat despite violence marking anniversary of ?f05 unrest

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Marauding youths torched hundreds of vehicles overnight and on Saturday in renewed violence coinciding with the first anniversary of riots that exposed a deep schism between poor North African immigrants and mainstream France.

A group of teenagers set one bus on fire Saturday in the southern French port city of Marseille, seriously wounding a passenger. Three others suffered from smoke inhalation, police said. Two other public buses and 277 vehicles around the country were burned overnight, police said.

Six police were injured and 47 people were arrested, ministry officials said. Still the Interior Ministry described the night as ?grelative calm,?h noting that up to 100 cars are torched by youths in troubled neighborhoods on an average night.

Police had braced for a bigger replay of violence in the poor suburbs predominantly made up of Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the deaths of two teens that ignited three weeks of riots in 2005.

The rioting was fueled by anger at France?fs failure to offer equal opportunities to many minorities — especially Arabs and blacks — and France?fs 5 million-strong Muslim population.

You can go here to read the full news article.

 

[Maciamo]

According to Economist, 21,000 vehicles were burnt in sensitive banlieues in the first 6 months of this year only.

Here is another related article :

Expatica : Vehicle arson largely a French phenomenon

French authorities are currently grappling with a wave of bus torchings ?\ including one on the weekend that left a badly burned woman on the verge of death ?\ that is adding to the "normal" arson count of around 70-100 vehicles each night.

Nine buses were incinerated last week, seven of them in the Paris region. The spate of attacks coincided with the first anniversary of the 2005 suburban riots that gripped France ?\ a three-week orgy of violence that left 10,000 vehicles smoking wrecks.
...
Most of the incidents in France are linked to suburban unrest among youths in high-immigrant, high-unemployment neighbourhoods. Some, though, are cases of insurance fraud or theft.

In Britain, theft is the main cause attributed to the thousands of arson attacks on vehicles there, according to officials. The latest figures, from 2004, showed 50,000 cars, trucks and buses were set on fire.

Rioting, in contrast, does not usually involve vehicle burning, as illustrated by the October 2005 clashes in Birmingham, when one person died and 40 people were injured but no cars were targeted.

The artice continues explaining how, in each other European country, car torching is so-to-say unknown during riots or ever.

 

[Ma Cherie]

Why do they torch cars? What's the point of that? :clueless:

 

[Maciamo]

Why do they torch cars? What's the point of that?

Maybe it's part of their culture.

Seriously, it is because these (predominantly Muslim) youths in immigrant suburbs come from a very lower class background, with a high delinquency rate. School is compulsory until 16 in France, but many of these youths just "play hooky" or cause trouble at school, so they rarely finish highschool. In France, there are already hundreds of thousands of young French people with a university degree that cannot find work, so naturally if someone is Arabic, speaks with an Arabic accent and dresses like a rapper, hasn't finished highschool, and has a known history of delinquency or vandalism, they have little chance of being recruited first. Hence, their unemployment rate is extremely high. It is already 20% for all youths in France, but I imagine that it is closer to 50% (sometimes more) in "bad" neighbourhoods. Hence, they are disoccupied, born, and add to that the fact that most are Muslim and have values contradictory to those of secular France, and that is a cocktail for trouble.

 

[gaijinalways]

I remember a year ago discussing this in another forum (US Politics online), and it was interesting to see the disagreement over whether more force should have been used to stop the arson attacks (now or before). Seems odd that the police and the government have such a wide spread problem, though I know a lot of it was centered in Paris.
Unfortunately, we have first hand experience of the unemployed Arabic youths as my wife was mugged by 2 such men on a motorcycle (resulting in a broken collarbone) in the Garre de Nord area in Paris. The police seemed pretty pathetic about it, and even though there are cameras on the street, it seems to be pretty difficult to use them to charge people (under French law as compared to English law)). The sad thing about it was at the hospital, we met another Japanese woman who was mugged about 1 hour before my wife on almost the same intersection. Seems to me like the police don't have much of a clue or don't care if tourists no longer wish to visit their city. My wife and I love visiting France, but I am very leery about visiting Paris again (this last time was only passing through the airports as we flew to Avignon).

But I suppose every country is dealing with how best to integrate new citizens and foreign residents who live in their country.

 

[Maciamo]

I noticed that police in France, Belgium and many other EU countries tend to be highly ineffective. They are good at giving parking or speeding tickets, and make use of their whistle in traffic jams, but when it comes to more serious things like arresting criminals or finding stolen objects or cars, they are suddenly very lazy. Maybe that is why they have such a bad reputation. They like annoying people over trivial infractions but don't act when we need them.