France

Officers across France are performing minimum duties in a nationwide action against the detention of an officer for beating a protester

On a typical day Olivier patrols a mid-sized town in the Champagne region of France on the look-out for dangerous drivers.

But recently, the 44-year-old police officer has either been driving around aimlessly or sitting idle in the police station.

If he sees a minor offence, he turns a blind eye. The only part of his job he fully complies with are emergency calls.

A French teenager was hospitalized after an attack by a group of youths who had taken issue with her choice of clothing on a night out left her face disfigured.

The attack occurred in the early hours of Wednesday morning when the 19-year-old victim, named as Nissan, was on a date with her boyfriend in the southern French city of Toulouse.

For the past few weeks, women archaeologists working on an excavation site near the royal basilica of Saint-Denis in the north of Paris have been subjected to intimidation and insults on the grounds that they wore ‘indecent’ clothing and did ‘men’s work.’ Posters calling for respect for their work and their persons have been put up around the site. The verbal abuse  the women have been subjected to has reignited the controversy surrounding the origin of the perpetrators, who belong mainly to North African immigrant populations that have become the majority in certain areas of Seine-Saint-Denis. 

Robert McLiam Wilson on the Islamist atrocities that are still haunting France.

Last week, the seventh anniversary of the 2016 Nice attack passed with very little notice outside of France. When Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deliberately drove a 19-tonne truck into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers, he murdered 86 people, including 15 children. This was one of the deadliest terror attacks on European soil in the 21st century. And yet, like many similar Islamist atrocities, it seems to have been largely forgotten about.

Over 2,300 people have been arrested in connection with the multiple-day riots that shook France earlier this month following the fatal shooting of a teen named Nahel in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Many have speculated about a connection between immigration and the rioting, with former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour explicitly blaming French immigration policy during an interview published last Sunday.

“No one can ignore reality anymore,” Zemmour said and added, “in spite of everything, most of the political class wants to believe that it is a social crisis when the root cause is obvious: immigration.”

Apart from the 96 arrests and 255 burned cars, Bastille Day passed off without a hitch in France. A bullish Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, expressed his satisfaction in a tweet, thanking the 45,000 policemen and women who had been deployed across the country. It says much for the state of France that avoiding a riot on their national day is a cause for celebration.

Still, one can understand why the government is grateful for small mercies after the trauma of the recent uprising. The financial cost of the damage caused by the rioters is predicted to top €1 billion (£858 million), a staggering sum for a country that is already dangerously indebted. This figure is double that of the unrest of 2005, when for three weeks youths went on the rampage.

More than seven in ten people in France are in favour of stripping citizenship for foreigners who participated in the violent riots that broke out following the death of an Algerian teenager last month.

A survey conducted by French broadcaster CNews this week found that 73 per cent of the country would support removing French citizenship from dual nationals who took part in the recent spate of racially-inspired riots accross the country.

A disturbing new trend is emerging in the country’s quiet suburbs

One of the most disturbing pieces of footage doing the rounds during the recent rioting which swept France shows an off-duty police officer lying motionless on the ground, as a helpless colleague tries to shield him. Despite their casual t-shirts and jeans, the officers were recognised by rioters and attacked in Marseille’s city centre. Following claims from both riot sympathisers and opponents online that the officer was killed, it was made clear that he had been hospitalised with a broken jaw.

Montargis, 15,000 inhabitants, 68 miles south of Paris, will refuse on Friday to celebrate the National Holiday of France, Bastille Day — no fireworks, no street balls. Instead, a brief ceremony will take place to thank the police forces and the fire brigade who rescued the town two weeks ago.

“Three hundred thugs, coming out of nowhere, stormed the inner city. They burned several houses to the ground,” Mayor Benoît Digeon said. “The population had to be evacuated to safer areas.”

Rioting in French cities over the past two weeks has left a trail of destruction costing €650 million, according to insurers.

The cost was calculated from 11,300 insurance claims already filed and is expected to rise.

The violence began on June 27 after the fatal shooting by police of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French-Algerian. Rioters used social media to co-ordinate attacks on public buildings that they saw as symbols of the state.