Blogs > FRENCH INTIFADA UPDATE/ FRANCE 2 REPORTS

Sep 28, 2006

FRENCH INTIFADA UPDATE/ FRANCE 2 REPORTS



It is getting worse. 2 elementary schools and buses were torched.

It is getting worse. 2 elementary schools and buses were torched.

France 2 news began with parents arriving at school to find that their children's classrooms and so was the work place of now 80 newly unemployed workers.

They showed a car with reporters surrounded. The car opens, the reporters jump out and begin running. The Police car swoops by and picks them up speeding away. Their car used as trophy is burned. Police, too, run away.

This has only just begun.

Earlier Wednesday, in Clichy-sous-Bois the epicentre of the trouble, youths explained their actions to AFP.

“We have found our thrills: playing with riot police in the evening,” said one 22-year-old under cover of anonymity.

“As long as the police come and provoke us in the evening, we’ll bring out the Molotov cocktails, stones, petanque balls, planks,” he said.

Around him, half a dozen youths nodded in agreement.

This is a comment sent to the BBC:

I lived in France for 8 years and I have never understood why the “youths” deal with"social problems" only through riots. Until one day, I was admitted in a meeting of a so- called" cultural association" subsidized by the local council. A Muslim"brother" talked for about an hour on the difference between"us" and"them", to conclude that whatever we do to"them" is of god's will, a kind of Jihad. Well, the French authorities should start inquiring on the kind of “culture” they are subsidizing.

Chadi Bou Habib, BEIRUT, Lebanon



comments powered by Disqus