Riot emergency brings back curfew laws of the colonial age

The Times November 09, 2005

Riot emergency brings back curfew laws of the colonial age
Charles Bremner in Paris

POLICE began enforcing curfews in riot-hit areas across France last
night after President Chirac declared a state of emergency, applying
a law last used in the 1960s in an attempt to end the orgy of arson
by youths from immigrant housing estates.

The law, enacted in 1955 to suppress riots in Algeria, a French
colony at the time, empowers regional authorities to declare curfews,
order house searches, prohibit public assembly and put people under
house arrest. Curfew breakers will be liable to up to two months’
imprisonment during the emergency, which lasts for an initial 12
days. Opponents denounced the measures as dangerously provocative,
but M Chirac told the Cabinet after a twelfth successive night of
violence that it was “necessary to accelerate the return to calm”.

As the measures were about to come into effect, fresh outbreaks were
reported in Toulouse last night, with dozens of youths setting cars
alight and hurling petrol bombs at police.

Monday night’s grim toll across France stood at 1,173 vehicles burnt,
several schools and public buildings attacked and 330 arrested. In
Toulouse a rioter lost a hand trying to throw back a tear gas
grenade. In the Breton port of Brest, police said that attackers
fired pellets at them. In Lyon two officers were injured by steel
boules. Police leaders and mayors in towns that have been hit by the
worst violence in France since 1968 generally welcomed the emergency
measures. But it was opposed by teachers, sections of the Left and
the media, and by groups working to calm the Muslim-dominated housing
estates.

Le Monde, the leading daily newspaper in France, took strong
exception. “Exhuming a 1955 law sends to the youth of the suburbs a
message of astonishing brutality: that after 50 years France intends
to treat them exactly as it did their grandparents,” it said. The
largest teacher’s union said that M Chirac’s decision would be seen
as a “message of war” to disaffected youths who already see the riot
police as an army sent to humiliate them.

The 1955 law was applied by President de Gaulle in 1962 to combat
violent opposition to his decision to pull out of Algeria after an
eight-year war.

As local authorities prepared a list of areas for curfews, judges in
the Paris suburbs and other cities rushed through the trials of
youths caught destroying property or fighting police. More than 260
young men have been sentenced. About half of those detained were
under the age of 16.

“The kids don’t understand the gravity of their deeds,” a senior
police officer said. “We call it the Game Boy effect. They go out and
do over cops like they do on their video games. The leaders are 18 to
25, but they put the young ones up to throw the petrol bottles.”

Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, also announced a
multimillion-pound package of measures to ease the plight of the
descendants of the immigrants from the 1950s and 1960s whose anger
has exploded on to the streets.

The package includes the creation of a national anti-discrimination
agency and 20,000 jobs with local government bodies or associations
for estate dwellers. The Prime Minister told parliament: “We must be
clear — the Republic is at a moment of truth. What is in question is
the effectiveness of our model of integration.”

The riots, which began on October 27, have laid bare the failure of
the republican doctrine, which supposedly promotes assimilation by
guaranteeing equality while officially refusing to acknowledge the
needs of ethnic or religious communities. M de Villepin said that
racial discrimination was a daily fact of life, as reflected in the
preference given to jobseekers with native French-sounding names.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-Right National Front, said
that the unrest was the “civil war” that he has long predicted as a
result of uncontrolled immigration.

The riots in France showed how the combination of inequality, race
and powerlessness could be incendiary, Trevor Phillips, the chairman
of the Commission for Racial Equality said. Speaking in Edinburgh at
the 40th anniversary of the first anti-discrimination law introduced
in Britain, Mr Phillips said race equality legislation was not an
abstract and often arose out of tragedy.

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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