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France crime crackdown targets foreigners
NATIONALITY:
In the wake of recent violence, Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to strip foreign-born individuals of their citizenship if they attack police or public officials
AFP
, GRENOBLE, FRANCE
Sunday, Aug 01, 2010, Page 1
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A teenage girl fixes her hair near hanging laundry inside an illegal camp of traveling people in Indre, near Nantes, western France, on Friday. French President Nicholas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered the dismantling of 300 illegal camps of traveling people and Roma across France, as part of a “war” on crime and urban violence.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed on Friday to crack down on foreign-born criminals, pushing his “war on crime” amid fear of violence between police and immigrant minorities.
Sarkozy vowed to strip foreign-born individuals of their French nationality if they attack police or public officials, in the wake of deadly shootings and other violence between police and suspects in largely immigrant districts.
His declaration coincided with evidence of violent behavior by the authorities themselves: a video of French police violently evicting Africans from a squat in a suburb of Paris.
The video, published on the Web site DailyMotion and broadcast by CNN news, shows police dragging screaming African women along the ground, including one with a baby in a sling on her back beneath her and another apparently pregnant.
The Seine-Saint-Denis police authority rejected charges of brutality and said the eviction in La Corneuve was carried out “in relatively good conditions.”
Struggling in the opinion polls after his government was implicated in a financial scandal and in the wake of a spate of violent unrest, Sarkozy on Friday announced a headline-grabbing package of security measures.
Top of the list, in a week when Sarkozy had already threatened to expel foreign Roma minorities who commit crimes, was a vow to tighten nationality rules for other non-French-born criminals.
“Nationality should be stripped from anyone of foreign origin who deliberately endangers the life of a police officer, a soldier or a gendarme or anyone else holding public authority,” Sarkozy said.
Michel Tubiana of the French Human Rights League said Sarkozy was “singing the old tune of the 1930s, aimed at stirring up hatred against foreigners” — a reference to fascist persecution in Europe between the World Wars.
Speaking in the eastern city of Grenoble, scene of recent clashes between police and armed rioters, Sarkozy said that foreign minors who commit crimes would henceforth find it harder to get citizenship on coming of age.
During fierce street battles on the weekend of July 16, rioters opened fire and torched shops and cars in Grenoble after police shot dead a 27-year-old suspected robber in a chase.
A prosecutor ruled that police had fired in self-defense.
In a separate clash last week, masked rioters tried to storm a police station in Saint-Aignan, central France, after police shot dead a Gypsy during a car chase.
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