FRANCE-SHOOTING/SUBURBS Paris suburbs in the spotlight after attacks by home-grown Islamists

Record ID: 324658

  • Title: FRANCE-SHOOTING/SUBURBS Paris suburbs in the spotlight after attacks by home-grown Islamists
  • Date: 23rd January 2015
  • Summary: AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE (JANUARY 22, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS SKYLINE BUILDING WINDOWS AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE (JANUARY 21, 2015) (REUTERS) CHILDREN WALKING AWAY FROM SCHOOL
  • Embargoed: 7th February 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAA496IHXXZRH1SZS27MYBMH2J8
  • Story Text: PLEASE NOTE THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    Deadly shootings by home-grown Islamists have cast a light on what French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called a "geographical, social and ethnic apartheid," in one of the starkest indictments of French society by a government figure.
    The January 7-9 attacks on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris have plunged France into a soul-searching debate to assess how the three gunmen were radicalised and how to prevent a repeat of the violence that claimed 17 victims.
    Valls said France had to look at all the divisions and tensions that have been simmering for years, and especially since 2005 when riots erupted across many of France's powder-keg suburbs.
    "Relegation of some to the suburbs, ghettos, things I was already talking about in 2005, a geographic, social, ethnic apartheid which has developed in our country," Valls said.
    Run-down neighbourhoods ring many French cities, often populated by poor whites, blacks and people of North African descent who feel marginalized from mainstream society.
    The unrest is often blamed on a combination of unemployment in such zones running as high as 40 percent, racial discrimination and perceived hostile policing.
    For those working in the suburbs, members of associations or local politicians, the personal history of the children involved holds part of the explanation.
    Clichy-sous-Bois Deputy Mayor and founder of association for urban youth "AC LE FEU", Mehdi Bigaderne, said on Wednesday (January 21) that many kids raised in Paris' suburbs felt abandoned by society.
    "All these children are above all children of the Republic, products of the French Republic. We must look at the personal history of these kids. At some point they didn't come into contact with French Republic in their lives anymore. Lately, we have seen some in the media looking into the backgrounds of the Kouachi brothers who lost their father when they were very young and whose mother... -- once again, I am not trying to excuse them, it's inexcusable -- their lives are pretty chaotic and at some point, the Republic has abandoned them. It's no longer a feeling, it's a fact. In these territories, the Republic is not present enough. There is a desertification of public services," Bigaderne said.
    France unveiled a battery of new measures on Thursday aimed at helping schools combat radical Islam, racism and anti-Semitism in the latest series of emergency policies launched in the wake of the attacks.
    The moves, including more teacher training and civic and ethics education in the country's secular curriculum, came after dozens of schools complained of pupils refusing to join a January 8 nationwide minute of silence for the victims.
    French symbols such as the flag and national anthem will be explicitly celebrated and one day, December 9, set aside as a "Day of Secularism".
    Around 200 incidents in which the national minute of silence was disrupted in schools were reported to the education ministry and social media testified to a vigourous debate among many pupils about the limits of freedom of expression.
    "Secularism has to be owned, totally, as an opportunity, as a value, which allows school to be both the guarantor of the Republican collective conscience, and also a way of emancipating each individual student," Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said.
    But Yamine Ouassini, who participated in the 2005 riots, said the problem lay more in social and economic policies than in secularism.
    "I feel like saying that they (the politicians) don't know what they are talking about. I am calling on them to come and visit to see really what's going on, and make the right decisions. Kids are leaving school earlier and earlier, there are no jobs, what are they going to do?," Ouassini said.
    Along with a number of teachers working in difficult suburbs, Lahoucine Belkaid, a civic education and history teacher said he felt there was a gap between what students are taught in classes and the reality of their daily lives.
    "Our role is to repeat that there is a republican equality even if it's difficult for them to understand and to assimilate it. For example they just have to look around them to see big social difficulties. It can be an elder brother who has no job, parents with a difficult daily situation, so I think they can feel a certain gap between the rhetoric that one tries to instil them and their daily reality," Belkaid said.
    Following the attacks, several local politicians acting in the suburbs were given the opportunity to express their experience to representatives of the government.
    As deputy mayor of one of Paris's difficult suburbs, Mehdi Bigaderne called on public authorities to have an open debate on the state of the suburbs to improve their situation and not just to clear consciences in a moment of national emotion.
    "So what do we do now? We are waiting. But it's beyond the will of the municipality. Today everyone should assume their responsibilities, and especially our political representatives. The question is not to debate when national emotions are running high, to open a debate on living conditions in certain districts, but more to work with those who are acting in these areas to understand where the flaws are, what the debate is, to solve them once and for all and stop tinkering just to have a clear conscience," he said.
    Robert Ebode, who grew up in one of the suburbs and is now a banker, said it was France's responsibility to help its children and take them out of poverty so that they could take the right path.
    "One has to stop using these cliches and start giving the ability to these families to escape poverty, for those who live in poverty, and help their children. These children are France's future generations. We can't deny it, they are French like us, they have their ID's, they are the future generations. So they need some help to go in the right direction," Ebode said.
    While politicians from all governing parties have vowed to tackle the problems of the suburbs over the last 30 years, the failure of such efforts has left a growing sense of desperation and isolation that has fuelled radicalisation.
    France's challenge is now to make sure that its proposals will put an end to a growing feeling that there are second class citizens in the country who are left out by the Republic.
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