France is Burning

The French government declared a 12-day state of emergency on November 8, enacting a 50 year-old-law to impose curfews throughout the suburbs, or cités, and give police sweeping powers to detain, arrest and imprison those suspected of participating in, or inciting others to participate in, the riots which have swept the country for the past three weeks. Thousands of additional police, including the infamous riot division known as the CRS, have been deployed since the state of emergency was declared, arresting close to 500 people in less than a week and bringing to 1,500 the total number arrested since the riots began.

The emergency law imposed by the French government was first enacted in 1955 during the uprising of the Algerian people against France’s colonial occupation and was applied in both Algeria and France in an unsuccessful attempt to quell the national struggle of the Algerian people. Today the law is being used against the children and grandchildren of immigrants from Algeria and other Northern African and Middle Eastern countries. These youth are almost all second or third-generation French citizens, yet they have been treated as second-class citizens within France for decades.

Immediately after the riots broke out, triggered by the deaths of two youth who, fleeing police, were killed when they tried to scale an electric fence, it became very clear that the accusations of racism and exclusion which have been levelled against the French state by French citizens of African and Middle Eastern descent are justified. Police claimed they were chasing the youth because they were criminals, although never provided any evidence to back up this claim. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy described the two as “delinquents” who fled the police because they were guilty of robbery and vandalism. During a television interview four days later he was forced to concede that neither had a criminal record. However, on November 3, after an internal investigation, the police officers involved in the chase were exonerated of any wrongdoing.

Sarkozy went on to speak at length about the need to rid the cités of “refuse, vermin who have no purpose but to destroy”. He also said the rioting was being incited by “foreigners” who were intent on destroying the French republic, and that they must be deported “without delay”. The fact is that by all accounts, the vast majority of those involved in the riots are French citizens, with the few who Sarkozy has already targeted for deportation youth having lived in France for most of their lives, although their families have not yet received citizenship.

These youth are the product of what the French government has euphemistically described as “sensitive urban zones” – 751 state-engineered enclaves which have become ghettos for those of North African descent. France encouraged mass immigration from North Africa starting in the 1950s, using those who arrived to drive down wages and working conditions. In order to house these newly-arrived workers quickly and cheaply French officials began building suburbs on the outskirts of large urban centres and settling new immigrants there.

The housing provided in the cités has never been adequate, with overcrowding and its endemic problems of crime and violence growing steadily. Studies done over the years have found the schools in these areas operate far below national standards, with a 40 per cent drop-out rate. While technically students could attend schools in other districts, in reality, transportation is quite limited, making it difficult for residents to leave. Cutbacks to social spending over the past two decades has also hit the cités hardest, coming at a time when massive investments were required simply to keep existing housing stock, schools and public buildings from crumbling. In fact, cases of apartments and other buildings collapsing or being destroyed by fire have become common over the past five years.

Besides unemployment, underemployment is also a chronic problem, with those of North African descent constituting what one commentator recently described as a “janitorial class”. An experiment by the French organization SOS Racisme a few years ago demonstrated this clearly: students leaving French universities and colleges typically send out dozens of resumes to prospective employers. SOS Racisme worked with a group of students and had them each send out two resumes to each employer – one with a “French” sounding name and another with a “North African” sounding name. Employers were more than five times more likely to contact those with French sounding names.

However, instead of dealing with the social problems which have led to the rioting the French government has declared the only problem is one of law and order. In fact, the problems in the cités are an indictment of the French capitalist class and its government, which is unable to build a society which meets the needs of all French citizens.

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