France Watch: Muslim Immigrant Youths March Through Paris
Suburban citizen group ‘AC Le Feu’ President Mohamed Mechmache (L) and vice-president Samir Mihi (C) attend a march in Paris, October 25, 2006.
AP: Immigrant youths march through Paris
Mixing rap music with memories of France’s revolutionary past, youths from poor neighborhoods of largely Muslim and African descent marched through Paris on Wednesday to present a collection of 20,000 complaints to lawmakers.
The march by several hundred people came ahead of Friday’s first anniversary of the riots involving disaffected youths from immigrant Parisian suburbs. Many in France fear new violence, with tensions rising in recent weeks.
“The context is still the same, nothing has changed. So the situation is propitious for other events like last year,” said Samir Mihi, co-founder of the AC-Le Feu group that collected the grievances from minorities all over France.
The demonstrators held ragged-looking notebooks filled with complaints while crossing southern Paris toward the Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after a stop at the Senate.
“Immigrants scare the French” read one unsigned entry. Another entry, by a 17-year-old boy from Besancon in eastern France, urged companies to use their profits to create more jobs.
Stay tuned for the riots this weekend. How will the French government respond?
Surrender again…….
A view of the charred remains of a city bus is seen Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006, at the bus station of Nanterre, west of Paris. The bus was set on fire on Wednesday night in Nanterre by a gang of youths, after they forced passengers out. The attack as France prepares to mark on Friday the one-year anniversary of riots last year by suburban youth, and raised the specter of a repeat of the three weeks of violence.
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