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.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS