The Bastille Day attack in Nice — the third terrorist attack to hit France in 18 months — has sparked anger and racism, putting further strain on an already tense political atmosphere.
“What is clear is that it has brought to the surface the fault lines which were always there but which were not so apparent,” sociologist Michel Wieviorka told reporters.
“When people can boo the [French] prime minister and talk in an openly racist way,” norms have been shaken, he said.
Photo: AFP
French President Francois Hollande has said “anger is legitimate” in the wake of the July 14 attack in Nice, in which Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel killed 84 people as he rammed a truck through a crowd watching fireworks for France’s national day.
“After such a shock, anger is legitimate, because our compatriots were killed, and innocent people hit,” Hollande said. “But it cannot degenerate into hate and suspicion.”
In Nice, rubbish has been heaped on the spot on the Promenade des Anglais where Bouhlel — who the Islamic State group has claimed as one of its “soldiers,” although investigators have found no direct proof of allegiance — was finally shot dead.
Chalked on the ground next to the heap of rubbish is the word “coward.”
However, some of the anger has also been directed at Muslims — even though, as the city’s mayor said, they were “probably the worst hit by this attack.”
According to local imams, about a third of the dead were Muslims.
Even at a minute’s silence in the Riviera city for the victims on Monday last week, anger and hatred boiled over as a video which has been viewed more than 6 million times on Facebook makes clear.
“Go back to where you come from,” a middle-aged man shouted at a young woman of North African origin.
“I was born in France, sir,” she replied. “Where should I go?”
“You are a shame on France,” he shouted back, with some in the crowd supporting him, as a policeman stepped in to intervene.
At the same ceremony, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was a target for sustained booing, with people shouting out that he should resign.
“Violence is lurking a bit everywhere in France,” Wieviorka said, referring to months of clashes at nationwide street protests against changes to the country’s labor laws.
“We are experiencing something which is being made worse by the political context with presidential [and parliamentary] terms coming to an end. All this creates conditions which maximize the impact of terror,” the sociologist added.
In contrast with the huge street protests that united France after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket killings in January last year, the Nice attack has poisoned the political climate.
Nine months from May next year’s presidential election, the right and far-right opposition parties are lambasting the ruling Socialists, whose popularity has sunk to a record low.
French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve has come under intense pressure to resign, claiming that he was the victim of an “undignified” campaign to discredit him orchestrated by Nice’s right-wing former mayor Christian Estrosi.
The row became even uglier on Sunday when a senior policewoman said the minister had pressured her to alter a report into security in Nice on the night of the attack.
Cazeneuve categorically denied the allegations and threatened to sue.
Her claims came only days after local authorities resisted a request to wipe “shocking” security camera footage of the carnage which prosecutors said they feared might leak out.
The Nice massacre was the third mass killing in France in 18 months after the Charlie Hebdo attack and November last year’s carnage in Paris.
In all, 230 people have been killed and several hundred injured, a toll never before seen in peace time in France’s modern history.
Top security officials recently admitted to a parliamentary inquiry that they were worried about the repeated impact of such killings.
“It puts the resilience of French society into question,” France’s Directorate-General for External Security director Bernard Bajolet said.
He said France had to strengthen itself “morally” for a struggle over a very long period.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in