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2005 civil unrest in France

The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November was a series of riots and violent clashes, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on October 27 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois. Events spread to poor housing projects (the cités HLM) in various parts of France. A state of emergency was declared on November 8 2005. It was extended for three months on 16 November by the Parliament. The biggest riots since the May 1968 unrest were triggered by the accidental death of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, in Clichy-sous-Bois, a working-class commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, who were allegedly chased by the police and tried to hide from the police in a power substation where they were electrocuted.

Timeline

While unrest had been building among the juvenile population in France, action was not taken until the reopening of schools in Autumn, since most of the French population is on vacation during the late summer months. However, riots began on Thursday 27 October 2005, triggered by the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor commune in an eastern banlieue (suburb) of Paris. Initially confined to the Paris area, the unrest subsequently spread to other areas of the Île-de-France région, and spread through the outskirts of France's urban areas, also affecting some rural areas. After 3 November it spread to other cities in France, affecting all 15 of the large aires urbaines in the country. Thousands of vehicles were burned, and at least one person was killed by the rioters. Close to 2900 rioters were arrested.

On 8 November, President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency effective at midnight. Despite the new regulations, riots continued, though on a reduced scale, the following two nights, and again worsened the third night. On 9 November and the morning of 10 November a school was burned in Belfort, and there was violence in Toulouse, Lille, Strasbourg, Marseille, and Lyon.

On 10 November and the morning of 11 November, violence increased overnight in the Paris region, and there were still a number of police wounded across the country. According to the Interior Minister, violence, arson, and attacks on police worsened on the 11th and morning of the 12th, and there were further attacks on power stations, causing a blackout in the northern part of Amiens.

Rioting took place in the city center of Lyon on Saturday, 12 November, as young people attacked cars and threw rocks at riot police who responded with tear gas. Also that night, a nursery school was torched in the southern town of Carpentras.

On the night of the 14th and the morning of the 15th, 215 vehicles were burned across France and 71 people were arrested. Thirteen vehicles were torched in central Paris, compared to only one the night before. In the suburbs of Paris, firebombs were thrown at the treasury in Bobigny and at an electrical transformer in Clichy-sous-Bois, the neighborhood where the disturbances started. A daycare centre in Cambrai and a tourist agency in Fontenay-sous-Bois were also attacked. Eighteen buses were damaged by arson at a depot in Saint-Etienne. The mosque in Saint-Chamond was hit by three firebombs, which did little damage.

Only 163 vehicles went up in flames on the 20th night of unrest, 15 November to 16, leading the French government to claim that the country was returning to an "almost normal situation". During the night's events, a Roman Catholic church was burned and a vehicle was rammed into an unoccupied police station in Romans-sur-Isère. In other incidents, a police officer was injured while making an arrest after youths threw bottles of acid at the town hall in Pont-l'Évêque, and a junior high school in Grenoble was set on fire. Fifty arrests were carried out across the country.

On 16 November, the French parliament approved a three-month extension of the state of emergency (which ended on the 4 January 2006) aimed at curbing riots by urban youths. The Senate on Wednesday passed the extension - a day after a similar vote in the lower house. The laws allow local authorities to impose curfews, conduct house-to-house searches and ban public gatherings. The lower house passed them by a 346-148 majority, and the Senate by 202-125.

A wine festival in Grenoble, Le Beaujolais nouveau, ended in rioting on the night of 18 November, with a crowd throwing rocks and bottles at riot police. Tear gas was deployed by officers. Sixteen youths and 17 police officers were injured. Though those events might have been easily linked with the riots in Paris suburbs, it appears they differ completely in nature and might just well be considered as predictable "wine festival" casualties, caused by misunderstanding and alcohol.

Triggering event

Citing two police investigations, The New York Times reported that the incident began at 17:20 on Thursday, 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois when police were called to a construction site to investigate a possible break-in. Three teenagers, thinking they were being chased by the police, climbed a wall to hide in a power substation. Six youths were detained by 17:50. During questioning at the police station in Livry-Gargan at 18:12, blackouts occurred at the station and in nearby areas. These were caused, police say, by the electrocution of two boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré; a third boy suffered electric shock injury from the power substation they were hiding in.

"According to statements by Mr. Altun, who remains hospitalized with injuries, a group of ten or so friends had been playing football on a nearby field and were returning home when they saw the police patrol. They all fled in different directions to avoid the lengthy questioning that youths in the housing projects say they often face from the police. They say they are required to present identity papers and can be held as long as four hours at the police station, and sometimes their parents must come before the police will release them." - NY Times

There is controversy over whether the teens were actually being chased. The local prosecutor, François Molins, said that although they believed so, the police were actually after other suspects attempting to avoid an identity check. Molins and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the dead teenagers had not been "physically pursued" by the police. This is disputed by some: The Australian reports, "Despite denials by police officials and Sarkozy and de Villepin, friends of the boys said they were being pursued by police after a false accusation of burglary and that they "feared interrogation".

This event ignited pre-existing tensions. Protesters told The Associated Press the unrest was an expression of frustration with high unemployment and police harassment and brutality. "People are joining together to say we've had enough," said one protester. "We live in ghettos. Everyone lives in fear. The rioters' suburbs are also home to a large, mostly North African, immigrant population, allegedly adding religious tensions, which some right-wing commentators believed contribute further to such frustrations. However, according to Pascal Mailhos, head of the Renseignements Généraux (French intelligence agency) radical islamism had no influence over the 2005 civil unrest in France.

Context

Commenting other demonstrations in Paris a few months later, the BBC summarized reasons behind the events included youth unemployment and lack of opportunities in France's poorest communities.

The head of the Direction centrale des renseignements généraux found no Islamic factor in the riots, while the New York Times reported on November 5 2005 that "majority of the youths committing the acts are Muslim, and of African or North African origin" local youths adding that "second-generation Portuguese immigrants and even many children of native French have also taken part.

The BBC reported that French society's negative perceptions of Islam and social discrimination of immigrants had alienated some French Muslims and may have been a factor in the causes of the riots; "Islam is seen as the biggest challenge to the country's secular model in the past 100 years". It reported that there was a "huge well of fury and resentment among the children of North African and African immigrants in the suburbs of French cities". However, the editorial also questioned whether or not such alarm is justified, citing that France's Muslim ghettos are not hotbeds of separatism and that "the suburbs are full of people desperate to integrate into the wider society.

There is a common perception, especially among foreigners and descendants of the recent waves of immigration, that French society has long made a practice of hiding, or at least whitewashing, its numerous signs and symptoms of racism, xenophobia and classism, by all accounts at least equal in intensity to those in other European countries. Racial and social discrimination against people with "typically" African phenotypes or Arabic and/or African-sounding names has been cited as a major cause of unhappiness in the areas affected. According to the BBC, "Those who live there say that when they go for a job, as soon as they give their name as "Mamadou" and say they live in Clichy-sous-Bois, they are immediately told that the vacancy has been taken." The nonprofit organization SOS Racisme, associated with the French Socialist Party (PS), said that after they sent identical curriculum vitae (CVs) to French companies with European- and African or Muslim-sounding names attached, they found CVs with African or Muslim sounding names were systematically discarded. In addition, they have claimed widespread use of markings indicating ethnicity in employers' databases and that discrimination is more widespread for those with college degrees than for those without.

Assessment of rioting

Assessments of the extent of violence and damage that occurred during the riots are under way. Figures may be incomplete or inaccurate. Some French media sources, including France 3, have decided not to report the extent of damage to avoid any risk of inflaming the situation.

Summary statistics

Started: 17:20 on Thursday, 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois.
Towns affected: 274 (on 7 November)
Property damage: 8,973 vehicles (Not including buildings).
Monetary damage: Estimated at €200 Million.

Arrests: 2,888
Deaths: 1 (Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec)
Police and firefighters injured: 126

Figures and tables

Note: In the table and charts, events reported as occurring during a night and the following morning are listed as occurring on the day of the morning. The timeline article does the opposite.

	day	No. of vehicles burned	arrests	extent of riots	sources
1.	Friday October 28 2005	NA	27	Clichy-sous-Bois
2.	Saturday October 29 2005	29	14	Clichy-sous-Bois
3.	Sunday October 30 2005	30	19	Clichy-sous-Bois
4.	Monday October 31 2005	NA	NA	Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil
5.	Tuesday November 1 2005	69	NA	Seine-Saint-Denis
6.	Wednesday November 2 2005	40	NA	Seine-Saint-Denis, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne Val-d’Oise, Hauts-de-Seine
7.	Thursday November 3 2005	315	29	Île-de-France, Dijon, Rouen, Bouches-du-Rhône
8.	Friday November 4 2005	596	78	Île-de-France, Dijon, Rouen, Marseille
9.	Saturday November 5 2005	897	253	Île-de-France, Rouen, Dijon, Marseille, Évreux, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Hem, Strasbourg, Rennes, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Pau, Lille
10.	Sunday November 6 2005	1,295	312	Île-de-France, Nord, Eure, Eure-et-Loir, Haute-Garonne, Loire-Atlantique, Essonne.
11.	Monday November 7 2005	1,408	395	274 towns in total. Île-de-France, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Midi-Pyrénées, Rhône-Alpes, Alsace, Franche-Comté.
12.	Tuesday November 8 2005	1,173	330	Paris region, Lille, Auxerre, Toulouse, Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté
13.	Wednesday November 9 2005	617	280	116 towns in total. Paris region, Toulouse, Rhône, Gironde, Arras, Grasse, Dole, Bassens
14.	Thursday November 10 2005	482	203	Toulouse, Belfort
15.	Friday November 11 2005	463	201	Toulouse, Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille
16.	Saturday November 12 2005	502	206	NA
17.	Sunday November 13 2005	374	212	Lyon, Toulouse, Carpentras, Dunkirk, Amiens, Grenoble
18.	Monday November 14 2005	284	115	Toulouse, Faches-Thumesnil, Halluin, Grenoble
19.	Tuesday November 15 2005	215	71	Saint-Chamond, Bourges
20.	Wednesday November 16 2005	163	50	Paris region, Arras, Brest, Vitry-le-François, Romans-sur-Isère
TOTAL	20 nights	8,973	2,888

Response

Allegations of an organized plot and Nicolas Sarkozy's controversial comments

Nicolas Sarkozy, interior minister of the time, declared a "zero tolerance" policy towards urban violence after the fourth night of riots and announced that 17 companies of riot police (C.R.S.) and seven mobile police squadrons (escadrons de gendarmerie mobile) would be stationed in contentious Paris neighborhoods.

The families of the two youths killed, after refusing to meet with Sarkozy, met with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Azouz Begag, delegate minister for the promotion of equal opportunity, criticized Sarkozy for the latter's use of "imprecise, warlike semantics", while Marie-George Buffet, secretary of the French Communist Party, criticized an "unacceptable strategy of tension" and the not less inexcusable definition of French youth as "scum" (racaille, a term with implicit racial and ethnic resonances) by the Interior Minister, Sarkozy; she also called for the creation of a Parliamentary commission to investigate the circumstances of the death of the two young people which ignited the riots.

State of emergency and measures concerning immigration policy

President Jacques Chirac announced a national state of emergency on 8 November. The same day, Lilian Thuram, a famous soccer player and member of the Higher Council for Integration, blamed Sarkozy. He explained that discrimination and unemployment were at the root of the problem. On 9 November 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy issued an order to deport foreigners convicted of involvement, provoking concerns from the left-wing, including, for example, SOS Racisme. He told parliament that 120 foreigners ; "not all of whom are here illegally" — had been called in by police, accused of taking part in the nightly attacks. "I have asked the prefects to deport them from our national territory without delay, including those who have a residency visa," he said. The far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen agreed, stating that naturalized French rioters should have their citizenship revoked. The Syndicat de la Magistrature, a magistrate trade-union, criticized Sarkozy's attempts to make believe that most rioters were foreigners, whereas the huge majority of them were French citizens. A demonstration against the expulsion of all foreign rioters and demanding the end of the state of emergency was called for on November 15 in Paris by left-wing and human rights organizations.

On the 20 November 2005, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced tightened controls on immigration: Authorities will increase enforcement of requirements that immigrants seeking 10-year residency permits or French citizenship master the French language and integrate into society. Chirac's government also plans to crack down on fraudulent marriages that some immigrants use to acquire residency rights and launch a stricter screening process for foreign students. Anti-racism groups widely opposed the measures, saying that greater government scrutiny of immigrants could stir up racism and racist acts and that energy and money was best deployed for others uses than chasing an ultra-minority of fraudsters.

Police

An extra 2,600 police were drafted on 6 November. On 7 November, French premier Dominique de Villepin announced on the TF1 television channel the deployment of 18,000 policemen, supported by a 1,500 strong reserve. Sarkozy also suspended eight police officers for beating up someone they had arrested after TV displayed the images of this act of police brutality.

Media coverage

Jean-Claude Dassier, News director general at the private channel TF1 and one of France's leading TV news executives, admitted to self censoring the coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians; while public television station France 3 stopped reporting the numbers of torched cars, apparently in order not to encourage "record making" between delinquent groups.

Foreign news coverage was criticized by president Chirac as showing in some cases excessiveness (démesure) and Prime Minister de Villepin said in an interview to CNN that the events should not be called riots as the situation was not violent to the extent of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, no death casualties being reported during the unrest itself – although it had begun after the deaths of two youth pursued by the police.

Backlash against French Hip Hop artists

In the aftermath of the rioting, there was a huge backlash against French rappers and hip hop artists, who were quickly blamed for inciting the youth of the banlieues (suburban housing projects or "ghettos") to riot. For many years French rappers had been creating music which told of the poor conditions they lived in and the strife, racism, poverty, and alleged police brutality. "For more than a decade, French rappers have been venting the anger of an alienated underclass, but rappers say politicians haven't been listening" . After the riots, two hundred French parliament members called for legal action against several French rappers, accusing them of inciting the violence . Many politicians, media figures, and other public figures went on rants blaming the rappers for the unrest in the banlieues, often using derogatory and inflammatory language to describe the predominantly poor, immigrant, and minority populations. David Brooks, an American columnist, referred to them as "poor young Muslim men" .

Many rappers spoke up and defended themselves from the accusations, saying that their rap was not directly calling for violence, and that instead they were voicing the concerns of the banlieue residents, those very same concerns which led to the riots.