Last month's riots in the Paris suburbs have drawn renewed attention to the failings of the French social model, writes David Tresilian in Paris In events recalling those that drew the world's attention to France's social problems in November 2005, some 80 policemen were injured, five seriously, in two days of riots in the Paris suburbs that also saw arson attacks on buildings associated with the state, including a police station, school and local library. The riots, which took place in the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel less than 20km north of Paris, saw groups of youths armed with iron bars, Molotov cocktails, hunting rifles and air guns battling with riot police for two consecutive nights on 25 and 26 November. Order was restored, but only after more than 1,000 police officers had been drafted into the area to deal with the disturbances on the third night, together with supporting helicopters. Riots swept suburban areas across France for several weeks two years ago in November 2005 following the deaths by electrocution of a pair of youths, Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, who had taken refuge in an electricity substation after apparently fleeing from police. Thousands of cars were burnt and thousands of people arrested in the riots that followed across France, in events that saw relations between France's disadvantaged young people and the authorities reaching a new level of crisis. The 2005 riots only ended after the government declared a state of emergency in the country that allowed authorities to impose curfews, ban public gatherings and carry out house-to-house searches. Last month's riots were also sparked by the death of two youths, Larami Samoura, 16, and Mouhsin Cehhouli, 15, this time in an apparent collision between the motor scooter they were riding and a police car. Following their deaths on 25 November, hundreds of masked youths took to the streets in Villiers-le-Bel and surrounding suburbs to battle police in events that marked a new crisis point, the rioters on this occasion being armed and able to inflict significant casualties on the police. A visit to Villiers-le-Bel last weekend revealed an ordinary, rather down-at- heel French town, the population's limited purchasing power indicated by the discount stores among otherwise standard shopping outlets and the few desultory cafés that seemed to be full of retired men subsisting on their pensions. A few stops from the centre of Paris on a commuter line, followed by a short bus journey, the town seems to have little to offer young people who must feel far from the bright lights of the capital, most of the active adult population working in small local industries or commerce. After the November riots, which gripped television viewers throughout last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in May 2007 on a law- and-order ticket, appeared on television on 29 November bearing a message of "firmness" in the face of what he called "anarchist yobs who will stop at nothing". Addressing the police earlier in the day, Sarkozy said that he rejected "bleeding-heart liberals who see a victim of society in every delinquent and a social problem in every rioter. What happened in Villiers-le-Bel had nothing to do with any kind of social crisis and everything to do with yob-rule." Dismissing calls for a review of police methods and a new approach to the country's deprived areas, Sarkozy indicated that "the correct response to riots is not to pour in more money at tax-payers' expense but to arrest the rioters." The police can expect more money to provide them with security cameras, "non-lethal weapons", electric pistols and "flash balls", a kind of multipurpose weapon, for use against rioters, he said. Sarkozy was minister of the interior and in charge of the police during the events of 2005, which he was accused of exacerbating by calling for the country's disadvantaged suburbs to be "cleansed of scum" using high-pressure hoses. Much of the population of the areas in question is of immigrant origin, often from Arab North African or sub- Saharan African families, and unemployment typically runs at 20 per cent or more, twice the French average -- 40 per cent among young people. After the 2005 riots drew world attention to the problems in France's disadvantaged areas, promises were made by the government that things would be done to provide useful education, employment and hope to disadvantaged young people. However, two years later little has been done, and by common consent social conditions are still poor. Speaking after the recent round of riots, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, the Paris suburb at the centre of the 2005 riots, said that "nothing has been done [since 2005] that responds to the problems we face." As one commentator in the French press put it last week, "we have been calling for a Marshall Plan for the suburbs since the early 1990s, and nothing significant has been done," in a reference to the system of loans made available to western European countries by the then US Secretary of State George Marshall after World War II. This November's events also drew attention to the actions of the police both in the lead-up to the recent round of riots and in their dealings with young people in the suburbs. While French police consistently deny harassing young people in the suburbs, this is just as consistently asserted by the young people themselves. Though the police denied pursuing Traore and Benna to their deaths in 2005, for example, their version of events was rejected by residents of the suburb concerned at the time, with further doubt being cast on it later. Following the deaths of Samoura and Cehhouli, sparking off the most-recent round of riots, an amateur video reported by the French newspaper Le Monde has similarly cast doubt on the police version of events. According to the police, severe damage to the police car was caused by attacks by rioters after the initial collision with the youths' motor scooter. The video, however, appears to show that the damage was caused during the collision itself, calling into question the police statement that the car was going slowly at the time of the collision and was not chasing the youths. As a result of such suspicions, some 500 people, led by the local mayor, marched through Villiers-le-Bel on 30 November demanding that "truth and justice" be done regarding the circumstances of the two adolescents' deaths.
