EUROPE: New Spread of Unrest Feared

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov 9 2005 (IPS) - Political leaders and experts are fearing a spread of the recent French unrest across Europe.

The fears grew after youth gangs from immigrant communities set fire to several vehicles in Berlin, in the northern German city Bremen, and in Brussels. A school building and a store were set on fire in Huchting, just outside Bremen.

A German police spokesperson denied any link with the riots in France, but a teenager in Huchting was quoted as saying they were inspired by events in Paris.

Minister for the interior in Germany’s Bavarian region Gunter Beckstein said similar developments to those in France could take place in Germany. “We are not protected against such unrest,” Beckstein said in a radio interview. “The integration of immigrants in our society is not completely successful.”

Kurt Beck, Social Democratic head of government of the federal state of Rhineland Palatinate, said deprived minority youths could feel tempted to follow the example of French demonstrators.

“We must pay extreme attention to this high concentration of the young population who do not see any opportunities in life,” Beck said at a press conference.

Margot Kaessmann, bishop of Hanover, said neglect of immigrants is leading to the creation of parallel societies.

Immigrants and their children add up to about eight million, which is 10 percent of the population of Germany. The Turkish community is the largest among them.

Bülent Arslan, leader of the German-Turkish Forum in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia said riots similar to those in France were not possible in Germany.

Peter Stech, a social worker in Huchting, said the recent incidents were not an expression of social unrest as in Paris. “Many kids think, oh, it is great, we in Huchting also come in the news,” he told IPS. “But there are no political intentions behind this isolated actions.”

Stech also dismissed worries that young gangs could develop across Germany. “I do not see gangs with 100 members around, as in France,” he said.

The unrest in France began Oct. 27 after two children from immigrant families died accidentally in a high-voltage electricity facility in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor district some 30km north-east of Paris. In the face of rumours that they were being chased by the police, which the police deny, angry youths went on the rampage.

The unrest that followed was then fuelled by comments by French minister for the interior Nicolas Sarkozy that the violent youth were “scum”.

In more than a week of rioting, more than 6,000 vehicles were burnt all over France. One person died in an attack, and up to 200 were wounded, included dozens of police officers.

“The French model of integration has not succeeded with the younger generation of immigrants, as it did in the past,” Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a television interview Monday evening. “I have talked to many young immigrants, and they have expressed to me their suffering over what they feel as discrimination.”

Society must respond to such feelings by providing opportunities at school and in jobs, he said. Villepin said the government would resume grants to social and humanitarian organisations working in poor districts of the country, and urged businesses to employ youngsters from immigrant families.

De Villepin also admitted that the French school system had failed to provide immigrant children proper education. “We have thousands of children and minors who have broken with the school,” he said.

But De Villepin also announced that the government had authorised prefects (local governments) all over the country to order curfews if necessary to control social unrest. France has invoked the “law of national emergency” passed in 1955 to deal with riots in former colony Algeria. “We will act firmly and justly,” he said.

Francois Chérèque, leader of the centrist French Confederation of Democratic Workers, who met De Villepin Monday, said at press conference that the youth riots were the price France had had to pay for “more than 20 years of neglect of the poorest districts of our country.”