French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended his tactics on law-and-order on Monday and pledged rapid police reinforcements after four nights of rioting in Paris.
Sarkozy, who also promised the parents of two teenagers whose deaths sparked the violence that they would learn "the full truth" about how their sons died, said the situation in some deprived areas had been deteriorating "for 30 years" and had to be tackled firmly.
More than 30 people were under arrest last night in the rundown northeastern district of Clichy-sous-Bois after some of the most violent clashes between riot police and mainly immigrant youths that the country has seen for some years.
Groups of youths have set cars and rubbish bins alight, hurled stones at police and fired at least one bullet in running battles that began on Thursday after Ziad, 17, and Banou, 15, were electrocuted in an electricity substation. On Sunday night a teargas grenade was fired into a mosque.
Visiting the nearby Seine-Saint-Denis police headquarters, Sarkozy maintained his hardline stance, saying policing would be stepped up to ensure every resident of France's poor immigrant estates -- where unemployment can be five times the national average -- had "the security they have a right to."
He said 17 companies of CRS riot police would be assigned permanently to difficult neighborhoods, along with seven mobile police squads. Plainclothes agents will be sent on to some estates to "identify gang leaders, traffickers and big shots," he added, promising a "national plan" to deal with delinquency by the end of the year.
Opposition politicians, human-rights groups and even some members of his own center-right UMP party have accused Sarkozy of being more interested in high-profile repression than long-term prevention.
They are also upset at his use of words such as rabble, yobs and louts, which they say is likely to stoke tensions further.
"This isn't how we resolve these problems," a former Socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius, said on French radio. "We need to act at the same time on crime prevention, education, housing, jobs ... and not play the cowboy."
But Sarkozy, citing statistics that show 30 police patrols are stoned and as many cars burned every night on France's low-income housing estates, is unrepentant.
So far, France's voters seem to back him: he is by far the most popular politician and is seen as a leading presidential candidate in 2007.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS