Strict measures enforced during virus pandemic exacerbate entrenched inequalities, say experts
David Keohane in Paris
A trash bin burns in the street during clashes in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, a northern suburb of Paris, on Monday night © Geoffroy Van Der Hasslet/AFP
In the suburbs to the north of Paris earlier this week, helicopters circled as police below were bombarded by fireworks and prepared to charge into an imposing white apartment block, called La Caravelle.
Violence between the police and young people from the “banlieues” erupts with disturbing regularity, but is now taking place during a strict lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus. This is inflaming longstanding tensions.
The Paris suburbs, separated from the city proper by the Périphérique ring-road, are among the poorest, most ethnically diverse and densely populated places in France.
“All the existing inequalities, of housing, of health, of jobs have been reinforced and revealed by the lockdown,” said Sylvie Tissot a political scientist at the University of Paris 8 in Saint-Denis. French interior minister Christophe Castaner played down the clashes, but admitted they were in part due to “the difficulties of the lockdown for these young people”.
The violence in Villeneuve-la-Garenne broke out on Saturday evening after a young man riding a motorbike crashed into an unmarked police car. Allegations quickly spread that he had been targeted.
“It’s the lockdown . . . what happened with the motorbike, that just started it,” said Michel, 74, sitting with Yveline, 69, on a sunny bench in front of La Caravelle on Wednesday afternoon, beside the house where they have lived for 25 years.
The suburbs have seen worse scenes before. Violence broke out in Villeneuve-la-Garenne in 2018 after a police officer fired on a car driven by a man from La Caravelle, while in 2005, two weeks of riots began following the accidental death of two teenagers chased by police in Clichy-sous-Bois, to the east of the capital.
The most recent clashes spread during the first half of the week to other Parisian suburbs, while confrontations were also reported in Lyon and Strasbourg.
Order has now begun to be restored — the man injured in the crash appealed for calm from his hospital bed — but the authorities are still on high alert. Since the beginning of the lockdown, everyone who ventures outside in France must carry a form justifying the trip.
Police have carried out 15.5m stops and administered 915,000 fines.Mr Castaner said that 220,000 stops, more than double the national average, had been made in the neighbouring department of Seine-Saint-Denis alone.
“I think that the young people today are persecuted by the police. We are never stopped by the police, but the kids are chased,” said Sandrine, a 46-year-old mother who has lived in Villeneuve-la-Garenne for more than 20 years.
Police officers stand ready during clashes in Villeneuve-la-Garenne © Geoffroy Van Der Hasslet/AFP
The police have been accused of using newly bestowed powers to harass and intimidate.
Videos have spread on social media of beatings that allegedly took place during stops by the police. A coalition of rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said earlier this month that the methods being used were sometimes “unacceptable and illegal”.
On Twitter, police unions have dismissed such stories as “fables”.
“In a time of high tension, they are sending in police who are not known to the community. I’m not sure that helps people,” said Zakaria Sekkafi who heads APSA, an organisation that provides food to the poor, and who works as a mediator between police and the young people of Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
“People here can find themselves in families of 12 in apartments of three rooms,” said Mr Sekkafi who also warns that people are running short of food.
“I’ve seen tears in people’s eyes after I give them yogurts.”
The existing inequalities appear to be reflected in the number of people dying of Covid-19.
Seine-Saint-Denis is one of the areas of the country hit by “an exceptional excess” of coronavirus deaths, according to French health officials. Of the more than 13,500 deaths recorded in French hospitals, 752 have occurred there.
While wealthy Parisians were able to flee to country homes to wait out the lockdown, in the suburbs many people don’t even have the option to work from home.
The result is that large numbers of “essential” but low-paid workers commute into central Paris every day to staff supermarket checkouts, drive buses and clean houses, exposing themselves to infection in the process.
A quarter of Parisian Uber drivers live in Seine-Saint-Denis, according to a 2018 study by research group Kantar, while the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, said that before the virus, 300,000 people left there every day to work in the capital.
The lives of those who have lost their jobs or have seen their incomes slashed have become increasingly precarious. Some academics who have studied the area also suggest that the disruption of the drug trade is behind some of the recent clashes.
The government is trying to help, with additional payments starting at €150 to families on social welfare from next month, but there are concerns that this will be too little.
“The lockdown increases the risk of violence, it increases the level of poverty, people are working less, they have less income,” said Agnès Audier, who is leading a study into Seine-Saint-Denis at Institut Montaigne.
It “just increases the difficulties which were already immense”.
Fabien Truong, a sociologist at the University of Paris 8 in Saint-Denis, said that the lockdown had shown “that the banlieue aren’t sealed off ghettos, it’s where cashiers, bus drivers, cleaners live and if you take a train in Paris you are taking a train with them. That is going to have to be remembered.”
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario