France Riot Watch: State of Emergency Declared in France

French President Jacques Chirac (R) gestures as he speaks with Prince Albert of Monaco at the Elysee Palace in Paris. The French government has authorised sweeping emergency powers, including curfews, to tackle the country’s worst urban unrest since the 1968 student revolts after a twelfth straight night of violence.

The ASSociated Press has State of Emergency Declared in France

President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency Tuesday, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit cities and towns in an extraordinary measure to halt France’s worst civil unrest in decades after 12 nights of violence.

Police, meanwhile, said overnight unrest Monday-Tuesday, while still widespread and destructive, was not as violent as previous nights.

“The intensity of this violence is on the way down,” National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said, citing fewer attacks on public buildings and fewer direct clashes between youths and police. He said rioting was reported in 226 towns across France, compared to nearly 300 the night before.

The state-of-emergency decree — invoked under a 50-year-old law — allows curfews where needed and will become effective at midnight Tuesday, with an initial 12-day limit. Police — massively reinforced as the violence has fanned out from its initial flash point in the northeastern suburbs of Paris — were expected to enforce the curfews. The army has not been called in.

Curfews should have been instituted after the first few nights of violence.

Nationwide, vandals burned 1,173 cars, compared to 1,408 vehicles Sunday-Monday, police said. A total of 330 people were arrested, down from 395 the night before

Local officials “will be able to impose curfews on the areas where this decision applies,” Chirac said at a Cabinet meeting. “It is necessary to accelerate the return to calm.”

The recourse to a 1955 state-of-emergency law that dates back to France’s war in Algeria was a measure both of the gravity of mayhem that has spread to hundreds of French towns and cities and of the determination of Chirac’s sorely tested government to quash it.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said curfew violators could be sentenced to up to two months imprisonment, adding that restoring order “will take time.”

“We are facing determined individuals, structured gangs,” Villepin told parliament on Tuesday. He vowed that France will “guarantee public order to all of our citizens.”

About time the French government stepped up to the plate to quash this violence in the streets.

The societal structural problems (non-assimilation) within France and their immigrant Muslim communities will take longer to solve.

Stay tuned.

France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin addresses the National Assembly in Paris November 8, 2005. Youths rioted for a 12th night in France while the government announced plans to impose curfews in the rundown suburbs hit by the violence.