French riots winding down, says police chief
In scattered attacks, youths rammed a burning car into a centre for retirees in Provence and pelted police with stones in the historic heart of Lyon.
A firebomb was tossed at a Lyon mosque but did not explode. The regional government responded by banning potentially disruptive public gatherings in parts of central Lyon this afternoon.
The nationwide storm of arson attacks, rioting and other violence has lost steam since Wednesday, when France declared a state of emergency. Youths set fire to 374 parked vehicles Saturday/Sunday, police said, compared to 502 the previous night.
A week ago, 1,400 cars were incinerated in a single night.
If the downward trend continues, “things could return to normal very quickly”, National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said. On an average Saturday night in France youths burn around 100 cars, he said.
Officials already are turning their attention to helping riot-hit towns recover: European Commission President José Manuel Barroso proposed today that the European Union give €50m to France, and said it could make up to €1 billion available in longer-term support for suburban jobs and social cohesion.
The 17 days of unrest - sparked by the accidental electrocution deaths of two teenagers who thought police were chasing them - began in Paris’s poor, disenfranchised suburbs, where many immigrants from North and West Africa live with their French-born children in high-rise housing projects.
The mayhem, France’s worst since the 1968 student-worker protests, has forced the country to confront anger that has built up for decades about racial discrimination, crowded housing and unemployment. The national jobless rate is nearly 10%; for young people in housing projects it climbs to 40%.
The Cabinet planned to propose a bill tomorrow allowing an extension of the 12-day state of emergency if needed.
Also, France was expected in the next few days to start deporting foreigners implicated in the violence - a plan by law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that has caused divisions in the government.
Azouz Begag, the equal opportunities minister who comes from an immigrant shantytown near Lyon, told Le Parisien newspaper he would raise the issue with Sarkozy privately. Begag recently criticised the interior minister for referring to young troublemakers as “scum”.
A poll in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper suggested Mr Sarkozy was the politician French people trusted most to solve the suburbs’ troubles.
Some 53% said they supported him - while around 71% said they lacked confidence in President Jacques Chirac.
Nearly a quarter said they trusted far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Mr Chirac’s main challenger in the 2002 presidential race. Le Pen has seized on the violence to promote his National Front party’s “zero immigration” platform.
More copycat attacks were registered in neighbouring countries today. Belgium registered its worst night in a week of attacks, with 29 cars, trucks and buses torched, the government said.
In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, youths set four cars alight, police said. Two cars were burned in the Swiss town of Martigny.
