Ten nights of riot that brought thousands of attacks on cars, nursery schools, stores and other targets in France including Paris, the French capital.
I am worried about my friend who lives in the heavily violent concentrated Seine-Saint-Denis region. This region is poor, full of immigrants. The answer from her is somehow, surprising that she thinks this is understandable. The reason is that she, as an immigrant has seen lots of prejudice, hostile in ordinary days. The unemployment rate there is three times higher than French average level. African and Arabic immigrants living and working in Paris have been pushed into ghettoized suburbs of Paris, where the state has withdrawn education, health, and other services, while increasing police presence, checkpoints, raids on sans-papiers and levels of oppression in general.
The trigger came on Thursday, October 27th, 2005, as a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. When police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.
The violence has now spread across France, extending west to the rolling fields of Normandy and south to resort cities on the Mediterranean. It also comes to the city of Paris, according to Yahoo! News, riot spread to Republic, close to city Hall.
African, Arabic and East European immigrants (maybe also Chinese, the only difference is that Chinese immigrants remain silent) have been considered as a “social problem”. They were treat as lazy, dirty, thefts, drunk and cause of violent.
In the past few years, as the economic downturn, waves of conflict surrounding immigrant issues can be seen across Europe. The year 2002, a wave of extreme right power saw their triumph. In the Netherlands, the political Danny said “Holland is full”. Shortly before the 2002 Holland election, the political Danny, the leader of LPF was shot to death outside of a radio station Rotterdam. Five days later, his party LPF won the election.
In the year 2004, director Van Gogh was shot and stabled to death by a Muslin young man in the city of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands.
Those were only small examples of the conflicts between the European and the immigrants (especially Muslin). I know the answer to this is not an easy one. The conflicts have economic, political, religious and social problem. The conflicts of today also rooted in the history. The historical reason can tracked back to colonial times, when the Whites ruled other countries and rape properties from the natives. Their colonization caused the poverty of those countries and interrupt the natural development of those countries. The historical reason can also dated back to the 1980s and 1990s, when the European economy was good, when a large population of workers were need. Immigrants came from Morocco, from Turkey, from Sénégal, from the former colonized countries. They were not well integrated into the society, were not educated well enough. When the economy downturn came, they became the first victim.
The old Europe need more efforts to deal with the immigration issues.
Another issue I want to bring up is that Chinese immigrants seems to be victim of the conflicts between the Whites and the other minority groups. The Chinese shops are vulnerable to all sorts of conflicts and violence. Chinese shops were burnt in Spain, Chinese shops were burnt in Paris. Why the Chinese are so vulnerable? Are we the silent group? Or, we only concern with what is going on within ourselves?
