FRANCE: Rightists Accused of Racial Murder That Shocked Marseille

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Barbara Borst

MARSEILLE, France, Feb 24 1995 (IPS) - The port city of Marseille with its centuries old racial, ethnic and religious mix was shocked this week by the murder of a French teenager of African descent, apparently by supporters of the far right National Front party.

Police on Thursday were holding three Front (FN) supporters in connection with the shooting on Tuesday night of Ibrahim Ali, 17.

Ali’s friends, mostly of Comorian descent, like him, say they were returning from rehearsals of their rap group in preparation for an AIDS charity concert. There was no fight, they told police and journalists. They say they were running to catch a bus when two carloads of FN supporters fired on them, hitting Ali in the back.

Baya Jurquet of the Movement Against Racism (MRAP) said it and other groups plan a demonstration in central Marseille on Saturday to protest the “racist act” and to urge calm. MRAP will file a legal charge of racism against the FN in this matter.

FN vice president Bruno Megret said they fired in self-defence after being assaulted by a group of youths. The FN tells its party activists not to carry weapons. Megret claimed that if they hadn’t been armed, “the death would have been on their side.”

The shooting on Tuesday night, is seen by many as an inevitable result of the high profile the FN enjoys here. The party advocates mass deportations of immigrants and a system of second-class treatment for migrants, behind French citizens in jobs and housing.

Selim Sahli of France Plus, which campaigns to bring Arab and Muslim French citizens into active politics, described the murder is “typical of extreme rightists who dream of a second Algerian Revolution,” a reference to the bloody war against French colonialism that claimed a million lives.

“They saw a black and they shot, like racists, like (FN leader Jean-Marie) Le Pen,” he said. “It will remind people that the FN is a danger even if it doesn’t take power.”

Ronald Perdomo, FN candidate for mayor of Marseille, said the party’s supporters have endured “22 years of every imaginable provocation” including the bombing 15 years ago of Le Pen’s home and an explosion at the Marseille FN headquarters six months ago.

Perdomo said the party has had a strong following here for a decade because the large number of immigrants “made people aware more quickly than elsewhere” of the problems surrounding the influx of people, especially non-Europeans.

In Marseille, the Front won 33 percent in the 1990 legislative elections and 51 percent in 1991 cantonal voting. The FN claimed some 30 seats in the 577-member national assembly of 1986-1988 but, with a change in voting rules, dropped to one in 1988-1993 and none today.

In the presidential elections of April and the June nationwide municipal vote, the FN seeks constitutional reform to give French citizens priority, effective anti-corruption measures, lower taxes, crime prevention and full employment, Perdomo said.

Deporting all illegal and even many legal immigrants is the solution, he said. The offspring of North and West African immigrants, although now French citizens, “still haven’t assimilated” despite costly government programs.

Many political activists were anxious to stress that the multi- cultural traditions of Marseille, France’s second largest city, still existed despite the political activity on the right.

Sahli noted that the FN has failed to increase its support in the region as the conservative coalition of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) and the Union for French Democracy (UDF) have taken tough law-and-order and anti-immigration measures of their own.

“But these kind of policies don’t sell here,” he said, “in spite of unemployment at about 20 percent, because Marseille residents see the economic crisis that excludes thousands from jobs, housing and other necessities as touching all, not just ‘little Arabs’. That creates real solidarity.”

Sylvie Andrieux, federal secretary for the Socialist Party in Marseille, also sees a sense of solidarity cohesion among the city’s peoples despite unemployment well above the national average of 12 percent.

Job creation, not immigration, is the real local issue, she said. The Socialists back plans for a scientific and industrial park expected to generate some 18,000 jobs after construction.

She is “optimistic” about election prospects because the left wing is developing a joint list and Socialist presidential candidate Lionel Jospin faces a right split between Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and RPR leader Jacques Chirac.

Renaud Muselier, RPR member of parliament for Marseille, said divisions on the right will heal quickly because there is no conflict of values. The right offers a better chance for regional job creation because it controls and can coordinate more municipal, departmental and national offices.

“Marseille is a big mosaic, but there’s no social conflict,” Muselier said. “There’s malaise, poverty, but not violence. This is a city of great dignity. That is not underlined enough.”