PARIS – The June 27 killing of 17-year-old Nahel that has sparked riots throughout France wasn’t entirely unexpected.
It brought the country back to the riots of 2005, ignited at the time by a somewhat similar incident. 17-year-old Zyed Benna and 15-year-old Bouna Traoré, both from the Paris-suburb Clichy-sous-Bois, were electrocuted and died when entering into the premises of an electrical transformer, trying to escape a control by an anti-crime police squad.
The 2005 incident sparked twenty-one days of clashes across the country. These three weeks saw more than 10,000 vehicles burned, 300 hundred public and private buildings damaged and some 4,000 people arrested. Tensions were exasperated when then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy referred to the rioters as a ‘’gang of scums,’’ a remark he had to take back again and again over the years. Twelve days after the beginning of these riots, admitting de-facto its failure to curb the violence, the government declared a state of emergency. And even then, it took ten more days to bring an end to the crisis.
Today, tensions in France keep increasing, since Nahel’s death during a police control in the Paris-suburb of Nanterre. Mayors are warning over expanding urban guerilla, especially since many of the rioters are minors, sometimes as young as 13, 14 years old.
Rioters have been posting video clips of breaking into and looting both luxury shops, as well as small groceries, torching waste bins, and setting fire to police stations, municipal townhalls and traffic lights. Hundreds of bus stations were vandalized.
A view of the city hall in L’Hay-les-Roses, the city where the home of l’Hay-les-Roses mayor Vincent Jeanbrun was ram-raided and set alight while his wife and children were asleep inside, in L’Hay-les-Roses near Paris, France July 2, 2023. (credit: YVES HERMAN/REUTERS)Dramatic scenes in front of a mayor’s home
But one scene especially had choked the French during the weekend, that of two cars torched by young hooded men just in front of the home of the mayor of the town L’Hay-les-Roses, south of Paris. The mayor was not at home, but his wife and two small children had to rapidly flee the house, fearing for their lives. The mayor in question had spoken harshly against the rioters since the beginning of the current crisis, and barricaded his municipality with iron fences and barbwire. He is convinced the attack against his house was personal.
These two periods of violence – that of 2005 and the current one – are similar not only because of their triggers but also in a wider context. They both reflect years of frustration and loss of hope amid the second and third generations of immigrants from Africa and North Africa to France. More than ten percent of the French population have emigrated to the country.
Their children and grandchildren still find it difficult to integrate into French society. Several studies over the years have demonstrated that candidate Muhammad would find it significantly more difficult to get a job, compared with candidate Baptiste.
Based on constant competition, the French system is allegedly immune to discrimination. Entering into prestigious public schools, getting into the best universities, and even obtaining the best jobs within the public service, are all subject to the system of competition, where grades determine one’s academic and professional future.
But this system of competition failed to integrate African and North African immigrants. The cycle of poverty they are trapped in does not offer their children the necessary studying conditions to succeed. Racism towards Arabs and Africans is also on the rise.
This cycle of poverty and exclusion makes those children of the suburbs feel rejected by French society, so they search for another identity. Some will find it in the mosque, others in the streets, with criminal gangs. It is a sentiment of ‘’Us against Them.’’
Salim, 21 years old, lives in the suburb of Sarcelles north of Paris. The Jewish community which used to live there had dwindled over the years, mostly over feelings of insecurity. Working off and on since he finished school, Salim has little hope for the future.
‘’My mother used to work nights as a cleaning woman in a hospital. With my brothers, we would hang out in the neighborhood after school. We never came home to study. Now I keep watching over my little brothers, making sure they don’t join the groups rioting at night. It’s not easy,’’ he told The Jerusalem Post.
This situation, where extremists can take advantage of those feeling rejected, created over the years no-man’s-land neighborhoods, where even the police are afraid to enter. More so, this search for identity pushed some youngsters also to adopt anti-Israeli and antisemitic views, in a dangerous cocktail. Some of these youngsters are led to associate their own feelings of persecution and rejection by society, with defending the Palestinian cause.
Following an emergency meeting with his ministers, French President Emmanuel Macron called last Friday for two necessary measures. First, he called on the parents to take responsibility for their children and keep them home. ‘’The Republic’s role is not to replace the parents,’’ he insisted. The second measure announced was cooperation between the government and social media, to erase violence-inciting content, and to close down accounts of leaders of the current riots.
Macron is hoping that this battle in the social media arena, combined with massive police presence in sensitive locations, would lower the flames. At least for now.
Still, he knows that even if the riots subside, the socioeconomic rift plaguing France is not about to disappear. The rising inflation and the increasing housing crisis are hitting hard the suburbs. Until the economic situation improves and until more children in the suburbs don’t get a better chance at succeeding, the bitterness of this ‘Second France’’ will only continue expanding. The next cycle of riots is already around the corner.
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