Migrants and cities

Brick Lane, London E.1

Le Monde’s latest ‘Culture and Ideas’ supplement has a very interesting interview with Canadian journalist Doug Saunders, entitled “Dense cities are those where migrants succeed the most.” Saunders is the author of a couple of books on immigration: Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World and The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Muslims Threaten the West? On the problems of immigrant integration in continental Europe, he cites, entre autres, cumbersome laws and regulations on launching small businesses and opening shops (Belgium, France, Germany), and restrictive legislation on citizenship acquisition (Germany).  Here’s the interview, which is absolutely worth reading

Le journaliste Doug Saunders travaille pour le quotidien canadien The Globe and Mail, basé à Toronto. Pour écrire Du village à la ville. Comment les migrants changent le monde, il a sillonné durant des années une trentaine de banlieues de la planète, avec l’appui de chercheurs spécialisés. Entretien, alors que l’Assemblée nationale vient de débattre, jeudi 13 juin, sur la question de l’immigration professionnelle et étudiante.

Quand on parle d’immigration, on a souvent en tête l’idée d’étrangers allant de pays pauvres vers des pays riches. Selon vous, il faudrait d’abord considérer ces migrants comme des personnes allant de la campagne vers la ville. Pourquoi ?

Les gens se font de fausses idées. Ils imaginent que tous les Polonais émigrent vers le Royaume-Uni ou que les Mexicains migrent en masse vers les Etats-Unis. En fait, des personnes originaires de régions spécifiques de certains

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The Marseille pogrom

Marseille 1973

In 1973. Before I get to that, a few words about a story that has been all over Israeli and (mainly right-wing) Jewish websites the past three days, of an apparent physical aggression perpetrated against Israeli filmmaker Yariv Horowitz on Thursday in Aubagne—just outside Marseille—, where he was attending a film festival (and where his film ‘Rock the Casbah’ won an award). The apparent aggression occurred at an ATM and, so reported Israeli news sources—including Haaretz, Ynetnews, and The Times of Israel—, was committed by a group of “Arabs” and who knocked Horowitz unconscious. Ynetnews headlined its Facebook post of the dispatch with one word: Anti-Semitism.

Sounded bad except that I was immediately dubious about the story, not that something didn’t happen—I didn’t imagine that Horowitz would have made it up—but of the details as reported in the Israeli media. First, there was nothing at all on it in the French media, which would not have ignored the incident—au contraire—had it happened the way the Israelis were reporting it. It would have been a news story, and likely a big one. Secondly, I wondered how Horowitz—who did not report the alleged assault to the police or even seek medical care—and his friend knew that the assailants were Arabs (or of Arab origin, as they were most certainly French). Thirdly—and regarding the inevitable mention of anti-Semitism—I rhetorically asked (a) how the alleged assailants could have known that Horowitz was a Jew and (b) why the latter assumed he was attacked for this reason. In the news reports there was nothing to suggest that the incident had a Jew-hating character.

But now we have more information on the incident, via the Aubagne film festival organizers and as reported in the Marseille daily La Provence. Nothing happened the way the Israeli websites reported. Horowitz received exactly one punch, but which did not seriously hurt him. The perpetrator was a minor and whose ethnic identity—as if it matters—was undetermined. There was no indication that he was of Arab origin and the incident clearly had nothing to do with Horowitz being Jewish. This was not a hate crime. Horowitz quickly rejoined the festivities. The incident should have never been the subject of a news story, let alone one with such incendiary allegations. I was going to do a longer post on it but see that blogger Ali Abunimah—who knows the French language, or has a collaborator who does—has already done the spade work and rubbished the story (here and here) as it was reported in the Israeli media. So will the Israeli websites that spread the disinformation—and particularly Haaretz, from which one expects higher professional standards—retract and apologize to their readers?

As for the title of this post—which is not entirely irrelevant to what I’ve written above—, the website Oumma.com has a post with a 55 minute documentary that aired in 2006 on Canal+, “Marseille 1973: les ratonnades oubliées.” In English: ‘Marseille 1973: the forgotten ratonnades‘. There is only one way to translate ratonnade, which is “pogrom against Algerians.” The etymology of the word: raton means ‘little rat’,which was one of the racist terms for Algerian Muslims during the French colonial era, and during which time Europeans settlers and soldiers periodically carried out bloody ratonnades. In the summer and fall of 1973 there was a wave of racist attacks on the sizable Algerian immigrant community in Marseille—with eleven murdered at random during the month of August alone—, culminating in the December 14th terror bombing in front of the Algerian consulate (causing four deaths and dozens injured—many seriously—among the Algerian immigrants waiting in line outside). Only one of the murderers was arrested and tried—receiving a five-year suspended sentence… All the other murder cases were classé sans suite, i.e. closed with no further action. Marseille at the time—and it was hardly unique in that part of France—had a significant population of repatriated pieds-noirs—a certain number of whom had been in the terrorist OAS (the KKK of Algérie française in its dying days)—, as well as military personnel who had served in Algeria during the war. Revanchists of Algérie française—with their violent hatred of Algerian Muslims—were present in force in the city’s institutions, and notably the police, judicial system, and right-wing press organs (most of the racists were on the right—including the recently founded Front National—but some were in the local Socialist party). Marseille was akin to a Mississippi town during the Jim Crow era, and with Algerians and other Maghrebis as the Blacks. What happened in Marseille in 1973 was a pogrom, even if the murders were committed by small groups of men and not rampaging mobs. There is no other word to describe it. I knew the history of this well but hadn’t seen the documentary. It’s very good. Do watch it.

It is, among other things, a reminder that the greatest victims of racist hatred in France over the past six decades have been Maghrebis, not Jews. Anti-Semitism was, of course, a scourge in France through the mid 20th century—and culminating in the collaboration of the French state with the Nazis in the deportation of Jews to the death camps—but it must be mentioned for the record that, with the exception of the Nazi occupation, not a single Jew in metropolitan France, from the Dreyfus Affair to the present day, suffered violent death in a manifest hate crime (in fact, I am not aware of any Jews being killed even in the unoccupied zone in the 1940-42 period). Such has not been the case with Algerians, needless to say. During stretches of the 1960s Algerians were murdered in hate crimes somewhere in France at the rate of almost one a week. And it didn’t end with the Marseille ratonnades of 1973. Just a historical reminder. Again, if one’s French is up to it, do watch the documentary.

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Affaire Merah : itinéraire d’un tueur

[mise à jour ci-dessous] [2ème mise à jour ci-dessous]

France 3 a eu un bon documentaire hier soir sur l’Affaire Mohamed Merah, et qui complémente celui de M6 du novembre dernier. Voici le synopsis

Le 22 mars 2012, la France est sous le choc, effarée par les tueries commises par un certain Mohamed Merah. En pleine campagne présidentielle, les Français découvrent avec stupeur que le monstre, tueur d’enfants, est un jeune de la banlieue toulousaine, à peine âgé de 23 ans.

Qui est-il vraiment et comment en est-il arrivé à tuer sept personnes de sang-froid?

Pendant plus de six mois, les auteurs de ce film ont rencontré des dizaines de témoins de l’affaire, proches de l’enquête. Ils ont eu accès à des documents exclusifs pour tenter de comprendre ce qui, dans l’histoire de ce petit délinquant de banlieue, a pu provoquer un tel passage à l’acte.

Pour la première fois, sa famille et ses amis ont accepté de participer, permettant de mieux cerner la personnalité de Mohamed Merah.

Ainsi, les auteurs ont pu reconstituer, année après année, les différentes étapes de sa vie : la cité, la prison, les voyages, qui ont pu le mener à commettre ces atrocités.

Ces crimes sont-ils l’oeuvre d’un fou ou bien celle d’un fanatique religieux? Quels étaient ses liens avec la mouvance islamiste ? Quel rôle a joué sa famille ? Etait-il un “indic” manipulé par les services de renseignement?

Autant de questions auxquelles ce documentaire tente de répondre à la suite d’une enquête minutieuse et d’une investigation sociale, dévoilant les failles d’un système judiciaire et les “loupés” de la police (DCRI + PJ) qui ont empêché de neutraliser Mohamed Merah plus tôt. Les révélations contenues dans ce film vont souvent à contre-courant des versions officielles.

De Toulouse au Pakistan, en passant par le Moyen-Orient, ce documentaire retrace tout l’itinéraire de Mohamed Merah, depuis la petite enfance jusqu’aux meurtres de 2012.

On peut regarder le documentaire ici.

MISE À JOUR: Oumma.com, site un tantinet orienté, a publié un “décryptage” du documentaire.

2ème MISE À JOUR: Voilà la une du Monde aujourd’hui (10 mars) : “Mohamed Merah a été repéré par les renseignements dès 2006.”

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Recent books on migration and citizenship

My blogging consœur Victoria Ferauge has posted an annotated bibliography of recent scholarly works she has read of late on international migration, immigration, and citizenship. It will be useful for those interested in the general subject.

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New books on Muslims in Europe

In my last post I discussed Tariq Ramadan, the charismatic Egyptian-Swiss philosopher who has authored a slew of books on Islam and being a Muslim in Europe, and with a target audience of youthful European Muslim post-migrants. More interesting-looking—for me at least—is some new social scientific scholarship out on Muslims in Europe, which is reviewed in this fine essay by Timothy Garton Ash in the November 22, 2012, NYRB. The new books are Robert Leiken’s Europe’s Angry Muslims, Jonathan Laurence’s The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims, Martha Nussbaum’s The New Religious Intolerance, and Paul Scheffer’s Immigrant Nations (this one looks particularly interesting), plus the Open Society Foundation’s report on Muslims in 11 EU cities. To these one may add anthropologist John R. Bowen’s Blaming Islam, which is reviewed in this essay in Qantara.de. Bowen has authored two major recent works on Muslims and Islam in France—both first-rate—, so this one will certainly be worth the read.

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Tariq Ramadan’s Arab winter

Photo credit: Sia Kambou / AFP

In my January 27th post on France’s Mali intervention I linked to a tribune by a Senegalese academic, Bakary Sambe, who skewered Tariq Ramadan for his opposition to the said intervention, and where I referred to the celebrated Egyptian-Swiss philosopher as an “overrated bloviator.” I am not a fan of the très médiatique Ramadan, needless to say, though used to have a positive image of him, taking him to be a moderate, modernist Islamic thinker based on numerous op-ed type articles he published over the years in the French press, plus flattering portraits of him that appeared here and there (I never did bother to read his books, which mainly focus on Islamic thought, not a subject of great interest to me and who has the time?). I also did not (and do not) care for some of Ramadan’s high-profile detractors in France and the US (e.g. Caroline Fourest, Paul Berman, Daniel Pipes), who have been engaged in an obsessive vendetta against him for years. And I considered indefensible his temporary banning from France in the mid ’90s—over which I initiated a letter of protest by MESA to then interior minister Jean-Louis Debré—and exclusion from the US during the Bush administration.

But after seeing TR up close—for the first time some five years ago, in a classroom talk—and exchanging a few words with him, I decided that he is a slick, smooth-talking self-promoter, who wows audiences with his affability, eloquence—he can give a one-hour talk in flawless English, with no notes and without skipping a beat—, and dapper good looks but ultimately says little of substance. And his answers to questions on politics and social issues during a Q&A are for the most part langue de bois (e.g. I asked him to give his assessment of the AKP government in Turkey—which had been in power for five years—, to which responded something to the effect that “What is happening in Turkey is very interesting and we need to follow it closely and see where it’s going”… Not terribly deep or enlightening). He’s a friendly fundamentalist, adapting his discourse to the circumstance. He does not, however, merit the demonization to which he has been subjected by Fourest, Berman et al—he’s not significant enough—, but nor does he merit the celebrity he’s attained beyond his following among youthful pious European Muslim post-migrants (and notably by European policy makers anxiously seeking European Muslim interlocutors). Intellectually and politically speaking, TR does not impress me.

And I do find his apologetics for the Muslim Brotherhood disturbing, not to mention his views and equivocations on a host of other issues.

I bring all this up as I read just the other day a review essay in TNR, dated October 1, 2012, of Ramadan’s latest book, in which he offers analysis and commentary on the so-called Arab spring. Reviewer Samuel Helfont, a Near Eastern Studies Ph.D. candidate at Princeton, was not impressed, taking to task Ramadan’s “problematic views,” “sloppy analysis and inconsistencies,” and “contorted arguments and anti-imperialist platitudes,” all of which are quite simply “not serious.” Very good. Couldn’t have said it better myself, even though I haven’t read the book (and have no intention of).

While I’m at it, here is a tribune I also read recently, by the Franco-Tunisian intellectual Abdelwahab Meddeb—a political and philosophical enemy of TR’s (the two have publicly crossed swords)—, “Towards A Global Network of Liberal Muslims,” that was first published three weeks ago in a Bangladeshi newspaper. Excellent initiative.

I mentioned Daniel Pipes as one of TR’s detractors. Pipes is no dummy when it comes to subjects of which he is a specialist but is politically reactionary and a crackpot on a number of issues (e.g. flirting with Obama birtherism, obsessively trying to “prove” that Obama is a Muslim, situating himself well to the right of Netanyahu on the Israeli political spectrum). I generally don’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. Which is not to say I don’t read him every so often. The other day I came across an interview with him in the current issue of The American Spectator, on “Islam and Islamism in the Modern World,” and which is surprisingly unobjectionable for the most part. I give it the green light.

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La Pirogue

This is one of the better films I’ve seen over the past couple of months. It’s from Senegal, about a major, real life subject, which is migration—irregular, clandestine—from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe: in this case, of the treacherous 1,500 km passage in pirogue fishing boats from Senegal to the Canary Islands in Spain (see the map here), which African migrants determined to reach Europe began to take toward the middle of the last decade, and that peaked in 2006, when some 30,000 came ashore in the Canary Islands. As the islands couldn’t cope with the influx, most of the migrants were transported to reception centers on the Spanish mainland, at which point they were home free—to move on to their destinations on the continent (mainly France)—, which the well-informed migrants knew would happen. The pirogues were piloted by Senegalese fisherman driven out of their waters—and into unemployment—by big fishing trawlers, mainly from South Korea. And the voyages—which have for the most part ended due to concerted international action—were organized by unscrupulous traffickers.

The film—which is an homage to the thousands of migrants who perished at sea (some 6,000 in 2006 alone)—reenacts, in documentary-like fashion, the journey: of the recruitment of the pilot by the sleazy trafficker in a coastal village outside Dakar, the assembly of the 30 migrants—native Senegalese and Peuls from Guinea—on the beach, the crossing to the Canaries on the high seas, the dynamics among the passengers—who are divided by ethnicity and language—, their contrasting reactions when they come across a pirogue whose engine has failed and is packed with desperate migrants (Guinean Peuls), and then what happens when things start to go wrong with their own boat. The portrayal of all this is no doubt totally accurate. It’s quite a powerful film for this reason, but above all because it shows the migrants as real, flesh-and-blood individuals seeking to better their lives—and at huge risk to their lives—and not as statistics, some faceless mass, or objects of phantasms and fear stereotyped by European public opinions and demagogic politicians. Seeing the film increases one’s revulsion—well, mine at least—toward the anti-immigrant demagoguery in immigrant-receiving countries. Not that Europe (or the US) should throw open the doors to unfettered immigration—which no one is proposing—, but that policy responses to the issue must involve respect and consideration for the migrants, that we’re talking about real people and who, again, seek nothing more than to better their lives. The film should be required viewing for anyone expressing a decided viewpoint on the issue, not to mention politicians and policy-makers engaged with it. Variety gave the film a good review, as did French critics. Pierre Haski of Rue89 had a nice essay how “the African boat people finally have their film.” Trailers are here and here.

On the subject of irregular immigration to the European continent, I saw a small Italian film a few months ago, ‘Io sono Li’ (English title: ‘Li and the Poet’; en France: ‘La Petite Venise’), on a young Chinese undocumented immigrant who works in a bar-restaurant in Chioggia, on the Venitian Lagoon, where she was sent by the Chinese trafficker who brought her into the country, initially to work in a clandestine textile factory near Rome. The story is of her effort to accumulate enough money to bring her young son from China to join her—while still owing money to the trafficker—, of her isolation in Chioggia, and the friendship she develops with a retired Slovenian fisherman, who has lived in the town for many years—he’s nicknamed “the poet” and is a regular at the bar—but, as an immigrant, is also an outsider. The review in Variety, which called it “a gentle pic,” is here. French reviews, which were positive, are here.

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Almanya & Kuma

Reporting on more films I’ve seen in recent months, these two, on Turkish immigrants in Europe, are worth noting. The first, ‘Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland’, by Turkish-German director Yasemin Şamdereli, is “a delightful, charming comedy,” as one review accurately put it, about a three-generation Turkish immigrant family in Germany and the trials and tribulations of integrating into German society. The film flashes back between the present day and the mid 1960s, when the father, played by Vedat Erincin—the acting is very good overall—, arrives in Germany with his wife, as a clueless Gasterbeiter. The reconstitution of the era is well done and with some funny, indeed hilarious, scenes. The light-hearted portrayal of present-day family dynamics, with the younger generation far more culturally German than Turkish, is also good, and particularly what happens when they take their big family vacation back home in Turkey (in the Izmir area, so far as I could tell). Variety and Hollywood Reporter liked the pic, as did French critics. Trailer is here. So thumbs up to this one.

The other film, ‘Kuma’ (titre en France: ‘Une seconde femme’), by Turkish-Kurdish-Austrian director Umut Dağ, is more serious—not to mention less joyous—, about a conservative Turkish immigrant family in Vienna that recruits, as it were, a “kuma” (a second wife), in the family’s village in eastern Turkey, for the aging father—played by Almanya’s Vedat Erincin—, whose wife is dying of cancer and instigates the affair. The unsuspecting 19-year old village girl thinks she’s marrying the son but discovers the truth when she arrives at the family’s home in Vienna. The movie is what happens to her and the family—which is rather less integrated and provokes fewer laughs than the one in ‘Almanya’. I thought it was quite a good film, absorbing, well-acted, and no doubt anthropologically accurate. Hollywood press reviews are here, here, and here. French reviews are here. And the trailer is here.

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Would You Have Sex With an Arab?

Continuing from my previous post—on recently seen films on Israel-Palestine—, this is an original and not bad documentary I saw earlier this fall,

in which Israeli Jews and Arabs are brought face-to-face with their own prejudices, grudges, and unexpected desires.

Several filmmakers have tackled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But few have approached the thorny subject quite like French Jewish filmmaker Yolande Zauberman and her Lebanese writing partner Sélim Nassib: through the prism of sex.

In their new documentary “Would You Have Sex With an Arab?”, Zauberman and Nassib take to the streets of Tel Aviv at night, prowling bars and clubs, cafés and underground soirées, in search of Israeli Jews and Arabs willing to answer a startling question: Would you have sex with a member of the other community?

The responses, ranging from militant refusal to candid confessions of illicit one-night stands and longterm love affairs ending in heartbreak, are funny, surprising, confusing, and sometimes quite moving.

“Would You Have Sex With an Arab?” never aims to dissect the historical or political twists and turns of a bitter conflict. Rather, it is a wistful portrait of a damaged society in which human dynamics are often far more complex than we are led to believe – and in which deeply buried reserves of desire and regret are coaxed toward the surface, thanks to one single provocative query.

A well-put synopsis (from France 24‘s website, which has an interview with director Yolande Zauberman). In addition to young Jews and Palestinians Zauberman encountered and interviewed—I was particularly intrigued by the Palestinian women—are appearances by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy and half Palestinian-half Jewish playwright Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was murdered by Palestinian extremists in Jenin last year (the killers are still at large). Variety give the pic the thumbs up, as did most French critics. Variety Arabia has a piece on Zauberman and the making of the film. Trailer is here.

On the theme of taboo love, I saw a French film last month called ‘Rengaine’ (English title: ‘Hold Back’), by Franco-Algerian-Sudanese director-actor-novelist Rachid Djaïdani, who has authored novels about immigrant life in the cités des banlieues and acted in films and TV series about them. He’s all cités and banlieues, Monsieur Djaïdani. The subject of the film—his feature-length directorial debut—is miscegenation between blacks and Maghrebis. Big taboo, and particularly between black guy and Maghrébine (it’s okay with regular white French, so long as there’s conversion—of the guy—to Islam). Here’s the synopsis from Indiewire

In present-day Paris, Sabrina (Sabrina Hamida), a young North African woman, falls in love with Dorcy (Stéphane Soo Mongo), a black Christian trying to make ends meet as an actor. They plan to get married, but when rumour gets out about their engagement, Slimane (Slimane Dazi), the eldest of Sabrina’s 40 brothers, is disgusted that his Arab Muslim sister would consider such a union. He is determined that Sabrina should stay faithful to familial and community traditions, and traipses the city in search of her. From this starting point, the first full-length feature from French novelist and actor Rachid Djaïdani develops into a provocative, freewheeling analysis of attitudes to race and religion in modern-day France that’s pertinent and relevant beyond the country. Presented in an appealingly raw style that nods to John Cassavetes, Hold Back is fearless, inventive filmmaking featuring frequent moments that surprise and disarm.

A compelling subject. I was looking forward to seeing the pic, particularly as the reviews in the Paris press were tops and it premiered at Cannes. Hollywood Reporter also gave it a fine review, though Variety‘s was rather more tepid. Well, I go with Variety and then some. The pic, which is set entirely in the city of Paris, was made on a near zero budget—which I can totally believe—, apparently took nine years to shoot and with 200 hours of rushes, and all for a 1 hour 15 minute final product that is so amateurish and on every level: the irritating, hand-held camera work, the underwhelming acting, underdeveloped characters, the screenplay (or lack of one), et j’en passe. That Sabrina has “40 brothers” indicates right away that the film is a fable, which enabled director Djaïdani to do whatever he wanted with it and take it wherever (which was perhaps inevitable, as by the time he finished the pic for this year’s Cannes festival he’d probably forgotten what he intended to do with it back in 2003). The love affair is not convincing—and Dorcy is no Romeo, that’s for sure—and contrivances abound. In short, the film does not work. Not for me, at least.

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Mohamed Merah, itinéraire d’un terroriste français

[mise à jour ci-dessous]

Le magazine d’information “Enquête exclusive” de M6 a eu un reportage exceptionnel dimanche soir sur l’affaire Merah. Voici le synopsis

Le 21 mars dernier, la France découvre avec stupeur le visage du tueur au scooter. En quelques jours, à Toulouse et Montauban, Mohamed Merah a tué sept fois. Ses victimes : trois militaires, un professeur et trois enfants devant l’école juive Ozar-Hatora. Avant d’être abattu par les policiers du Raid, Mohamed Merah se dira lui-même « envoyé par Al-Qaeda ». Mais qui était vraiment Mohamed Merah ?

Ce jeune toulousain de 23 ans, né de parents algériens, était connu depuis longtemps de la justice, de la police et même des services de renseignement. D’abord pour des faits de délinquance, puis pour sa proximité avec les milieux islamistes radicaux.

Grace à des témoignages inédits et des documents exclusifs, nous avons reconstitué l’itinéraire de Mohamed Merah. Son enfance chaotique dans une famille violente et déstructurée, son parcours de délinquant, sa radicalisation en prison. Contrairement à ce qui a été dit au début de l’enquête, Merah n’avait rien d’un « loup solitaire ». Son environnement toulousain explique en grande partie sa dérive djihadiste. Tout comme ses voyages à la recherche de ses « frères » en Syrie, en Égypte, en Afghanistan et au Pakistan.

L’arrestation ces derniers jours des membres d’une cellule terroriste, responsables d’un attentat à la grenade dans une épicerie cachère de Sarcelle, montre que Mohamed Merah n’est pas un cas isolé. De religion musulmane ou convertis, plusieurs dizaines de jeunes Français sont aujourd’hui attirés par les thèses djihadistes. Combien sont prêts à basculer dans le terrorisme ?

L’enquête de Mohamed Sifaoui, spécialiste du terrorisme et de l’islam radical, apporte de nombreuses révélations sur l’affaire Merah.

Il faut absolument regarder le reportage—qui dure 1h 25m—et du début jusqu’à la fin. Le voici.

Le témoin-clé du reportage, Abdelghani Merah—le frère aîné de Mohamed—, a écrit un livre (avec Mohamed Sifaoui), qui sort demain.

MISE À JOUR: L’émission d’information “28 minutes” d’ARTE a reçu Abdelghani Merah sur le plateau ce soir. (13 novembre)

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François Hollande’s apology – II

Today’s Journal du Dimanche has an interesting interview on the events of October 17, 1961, with Constantin Melnik, who was the coordinator of secret services at the Matignon at the time

Melnik : “Une responsabilité collective”

Le coordinateur des services secrets à Matignon de 1959 à 1962, Constantin Melnik, revient sur la répression sanglante du 17 octobre 1961.

Quand avez-vous été alerté cette nuit-là?
J’ai reçu un coup de fil du directeur de la sûreté la nuit même, me disant : “Il se passe quelque chose de sinistre à la préfecture de police”. Mais c’était du ressort du préfet, Maurice Papon. Moi, je m’occupais alors des négociations avec le FLN algérien. J’ai longtemps été accusé d’avoir participé à cette effroyable répression. Mais je suis complètement vierge. J’ai même été le premier à révéler le massacre.

Comment l’avez-vous su?
Chaque matin, je recevais la liste des musulmans retrouvés morts à Paris. En général, on en avait 5 ou 6. Mais après le 17 octobre, c’est devenu 20 à 30 par jour. J’ai convoqué le directeur de cabinet de Maurice Papon pour avoir des explications. Il m’a répondu qu’il s’agissait de “noyés par balles”… J’ai compris qu’il s’était passé quelque chose d’inadmissible. J’ai tout de suite demandé un rendez-vous avec le Premier ministre Michel Debré pour l’avertir. Il m’a lancé qu’on ne faisait pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs.

Combien de victimes?
Le FLN a annoncé 69 morts au cours de cette soirée. Mais comme il n’y a pas eu d’enquêtes, on ne connaît pas le nombre exact de victimes, ni le détail. Des gens ont vraiment été massacrés : certains tués par balle et jetés dans l’eau. D’autres battus à mort. Ou noyés, comme la plus jeune victime, âgée de 17 ans. Comme le FLN ne connaissait pas forcément tous les manifestants, j’estime qu’il a dû y avoir une centaine de morts.

Pourquoi ce déchaînement de violence? 
C’était une ambiance de guerre. Depuis des mois, les policiers étaient la cible d’attentats commis par le FLN. Ils étaient mal formés. Certains venaient de faire leur service militaire en Algérie. Ils se sont laissés emporter par la haine et le racisme. La personnalité du préfet de police, Maurice Papon, a également joué. Cet homme, qui avait été super-préfet de Constantine, était rompu aux méthodes brutales pratiquées en Algérie. Régulièrement, il encourageait ses agents, avec des discours du type : “Pour un coup reçu, nous en rendrons dix” ou : “Je vous couvrirai”.

Qui est vraiment responsable? 
En premier lieu, Maurice Papon. Le 17 au soir, il était dans la salle de commandement de la préfecture. Il était au courant des événements, mais ne pouvait rien faire : la police était incontrôlable. C’est aussi une responsabilité collective. Car il a fallu réquisitionner les bus de la RATP pour embarquer les manifestants, réquisitionner le Palais des Sports pour les parquer. Le ministre des Transports, le ministre de l’Intérieur, le Premier ministre et le président de la République étaient forcément au courant. Mais je ne crois pas que le général de Gaulle ait été informé du massacre. La preuve : dans les archives de la police, j’ai vu une lettre du secrétaire général de l’Élysée demandant des explications à Maurice Papon. Enfin, la fédération de France du FLN, qui avait appelé à manifester, a aussi une part de responsabilité. Ses dirigeants ont ensuite admis, en privé, qu’il fallait que le sang coule pour renforcer leur situation au sein des indépendantistes. Pour eux, c’était un acte de guerre.

Pourquoi l’affaire a-t-elle été étouffée? 
Tout le monde a fermé les yeux. D’abord, parce qu’à l’époque, la population était hostile à l’idée de laisser les Algériens défiler dans Paris. Si Maurice Papon avait laissé cette manifestation se dérouler, il aurait été immédiatement révoqué ! Là, il a poursuivi une belle carrière. Ensuite, le gouvernement avait besoin de sa police. Il devait lutter contre l’OAS, qui était un véritable danger pour la stabilité du pays. Moi-même, je n’ai pas demandé d’enquête. Mais j’avais un poids sur la conscience : le gouvernement que je servais avait commis puis couvert une infamie. Le président François Hollande a raison de rendre hommage aux victimes

Marie Quenet – Le Journal du Dimanche
dimanche 21 octobre 2012

There’s also this in the JDD

17 octobre 1961, de 30 à 170 morts

Ce jour-là, 20.000 à 30.000 Algériens manifestent contre le couvre-feu. Plusieurs dizaines d’entre eux sont tués par la police. Mais le mystère demeure…

Ce devait être une manifestation pacifique. Ce 17 octobre 1961, les Algériens de la région parisienne défilent contre le couvre-feu imposé par le préfet de police, Maurice Papon, aux Français musulmans d’Algérie. Tous ont reçu la même consigne : n’apporter aucune arme. Ils ont même été fouillés à leur arrivée. Vers 19 heures, 20.000 à 30.000 hommes, femmes et enfants convergent dans le calme, sous la pluie, à différents endroits de Paris. Mais bientôt, la répression s’abat…

L’objectif du FLN, organisateur de la manifestation? “Un des cadres de la Fédération de France du FLN m’a dit qu’il s’agissait d’un acte tactique”, affirme Georges Fleury, auteur de nombreux livres sur la guerre d’Algérie. “Le couvre-feu paralysait leur action. Ils ont donc forcé les gens à manifester. Selon ce cadre, ‘il fallait que le sang coule’ pour être entendu de l’ONU.” L’historien Benjamin Stora, commissaire de l’exposition “Vies d’exil” à la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (jusqu’au 19 mai 2013), n’est pas de cet avis : “Croyez-vous que le FLN aurait fait exprès d’envoyer à la mort des femmes et des enfants? Personne ne s’attendait à cette violence. Et la majorité des immigrés algériens étaient favorables à l’indépendance.”

Quoi qu’il en soit, la situation dérape. “Plusieurs milliers d’Algériens se dirigent vers le pont de Neuilly. La police fait barrage, elle ouvre le feu. Des hommes sont jetés dans la Seine”, décrit Jean-Luc Einaudi, spécialiste du 17 octobre 1961. Des scènes de violences se déroulent également près de la Madeleine, de l’Opéra ou sur le boulevard Saint-Michel. Les arrestations sont massives, plus de 11.500. Les hommes sont embarqués dans des bus de la RATP, puis parqués dans différents lieux, notamment au Palais des Sports.

Papon en première ligne

Impossible de connaître le nombre exact de morts. “Trois”, selon le bilan officiel de l’époque ; “40 à 50″ selon la commission Mandelkern en 1997. Pour sa part, Jean-Luc Einaudi compte environ 400 Algériens tués entre septembre et novembre, dont 170 à partir du 17 octobre. L’historien Jean-Paul Brunet, lui, estime qu’il y en aurait eu “entre 30 et 50, en y incluant également les morts des affrontements du 18 octobre, les blessés décédés par la suite et des morts dus à l’action de la police en dehors des lieux de manifestation”. “Il y a surtout eu beaucoup de blessés graves, notamment des traumatismes crâniens.” La répression a été d’une brutalité extrême. Les policiers se déchaînent à coup de “bidule”, des matraques d’un mètre de long. Un manifestant meurt écrasé, étouffé, dans un car de police, un autre est abattu deux jours plus tard tandis qu’il tente de s’enfuir…

Pourquoi ce déchaînement? À l’époque, la tension est à son comble. Depuis des mois, la police subit les attentats du FLN. Les commissariats sont protégés par des sacs de sable. Le ressentiment s’accumule. Et l’historien Jean-Pierre Rioux pointe également le nombre insuffisant d’agents sur le terrain le soir du 17 octobre.

Mais qui est responsable? Maurice Papon, le préfet de police, est évidemment en première ligne. En même temps, rappelle Jean-Pierre Rioux, “il n’était pas question pour le gouvernement et le général de Gaulle qu’il y ait une manifestation publique en faveur de l’indépendance de l’Algérie alors qu’ils négociaient justement avec le gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne”. Ont-ils été informés de ce déferlement de violence et du nombre exact de morts? Seules les archives, en France et en Algérie, pourraient permettre aux historiens de s’approcher de la vérité.

Marie Quenet – Le Journal du Dimanche
samedi 20 octobre 2012

On the varying estimates of the number of people killed on during the events, see this run down by Pascal Riché in Rue89.

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François Hollande’s apology

Historian David A. Bell has an article in TNR on the contemporary politics of historical apology in France and what America could learn from it. On the 70th anniversary of the Rafle du Vél’ d’Hiv this past July 16th, President Hollande delivered a powerful address on the culpability of the French state and that went further than President Chirac’s words on that day in 1995 (the English translation of Hollande’s speech is here; my blog post on the anniversary is here). And this past Wednesday, on the 51st anniversary of the sinister events of the evening of October 17, 1961, in and around Paris (which I have posted on here and here), Hollande issued this brief but remarkable statement

Le 17 octobre 1961, des Algériens qui manifestaient pour le droit à l’indépendance ont été tués lors d’une sanglante répression.

La République reconnaît avec lucidité ces faits.

Cinquante et un ans après cette tragédie, je rends hommage à la mémoire des victimes.

Again, a remarkable, indeed historic, statement acknowledging the responsibility of the French state in the murder of scores of Algerian civilians—French citizens at the time—on French soil. The UMP, not to mention the FN, has reacted with expected indignation at Hollande’s words but they may be safely ignored. In discussing France’s admirable efforts to face up to and atone for the dark episodes of its not-too-distant past, Bell draws a contrast with America on this score, of how American attitudes have changed and not for the better

Not only has France apologized for some past actions, it has also stopped boasting of others. in 2005, the government of Jacques Chirac quietly but firmly refused to mark in any but the most restrained way the bicentennial of the Battle of Austerlitz—arguably, the greatest French military victory of all time, carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte against Austria and Russia. Modern France, it was explained, had no business celebrating a bloodbath carried out by a repressive, undemocratic ruler as part of a campaign of naked imperial expansionism.

In the United States, sentiments of this sort, apropos of the darker episodes in American history, are anything but uncommon in university classrooms. In politics, however, they have become virtually taboo. In the civil rights era, American politicians could speak frankly and eloquently about the ways that slavery and institutionalized racism stained the American past. In the 1980’s, Congress could pass legislation acknowledging the wrong of Japanese-American interment during World War II, and granting compensation to its victims. But in the past quarter-century, conservatives have successfully cast any attempt to discuss the country’s historical record impartially in the political realm as a species of heresy—“blaming America first,” as Jeanne Kirkpatrick put it as far back as 1984. A turning point of sorts came in 1994, when the Smithsonian Institution planned an exhibit of the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, accompanied by material that highlighted the human toll of the bombing,  inviting debate on its morality.  The outcry from conservatives and veterans groups was deafening, and few politicians dared to defend the Smithsonian, which eventually canceled the exhibit.

What has changed in the US? There’s no mystery: the Republican party has been taken over by elements that, in France, would find their natural home in the nationalist, no apologies Front National, or on in one of the hard right caucuses of the UMP that has few  programmatic differences with the FN and advocates electoral alliances with it. Bell—who does not precisely put it this way—concludes

in practice, denunciations of “apology” play much less well in France than in the United States. The [UMP government's] 2005 schools measure [on teaching “the positive role” of French colonialism] was widely ridiculed and soon repealed. François Hollande promised to recognize the 1961 massacre during the presidential campaign last year, and still handily defeated Sarkozy, who did not use the issue against him. Defenders of Hollande’s Vel d’Hiv speech have pointed out that the new President was following the precedent laid down by a previous apologist-in-chief, the UMP’s Chirac. And anyone who strikes an overly contentious nationalist pose in French politics risks association with the far-right National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has predictably denounced Hollande, declaring that only God has the authority to recognize French guilt or innocence.

In France, in short, apologizing for your country can be good politics. It is in America where being a politician means never being able to say you’re sorry.

À propos, any bets on Romney accusing Obama of “apologizing for America” during next Monday’s debate?

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“Racisme anti-blanc”

[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below]

How low can Jean-François Copé go? In his knock-down-drag-out fight with François Fillon for the presidency of the UMP—on which the 260K party members will vote on November 18th—Copé has scraped the bottom of the extreme right toilet in his denunciation of the supposed existence of “anti-white racism” in France, which figures in his just published campaign book, Manifeste pour une droite décomplexée (here and here). The title is more than apt, as the mainstream right has indeed lost its complexes. For the president of the major party of the parliamentary right—grouping neo-Gaullists, the droite libérale, and even centrists—to speak about racial categories in this way and adopt the most abject demagogic rhetoric of the Front National is something one would not have seen a decade ago—and the mainstream right has been lifting FN rhetoric on immigration since the 1980s, though with limits. Not even Sarkozy went quite this far. The UMP, like the US Republicans, is lurching hard right—and it’s the base of the party that’s pulling the leadership along, not the other way around. Marine Le Pen, who is exulting, is accusing Copé of copyright infringement, of stealing the Front’s discourse, though implicitly dividing French society into racial categories is, in fact, relatively recent for the FN. Racialist rhetoric has normally been associated with the Bloc Identitaire and other sulfurous groupuscules on the outer fringes of the extreme right. Until the past decade the FN would rail on against “le racisme anti-Français” among immigrants from the African continent, a formulation that accented the national, not the racial (though implying that the French were a race that one could be racist against).

Whatever the category, the notion that there is such a phenomenon in France—of “anti-white” or “anti-French” racism—is so laughably absurd that the UMP leadership—which has by-and-large been echoing Copé’s words today—cannot possibly take it seriously. It is a phantasm of the extreme right, existing only in its delirous imagination. In explaining what he means by “anti-white racism” Le Parisien thus quotes Copé

le «racisme anti-blanc» se manifeste «dans certains quartiers par un regard, une agression, une insulte, qui donne envie à un certain nombre de nos compatriotes de fuir le quartier où ils habitent parce qu’on leur fait comprendre qu’ils ne sont pas chez eux. C’est insupportable.» [Copé] ajoute : «Je me réfère au terrain, à ce que j’entends comme député-maire de Meaux. Je me dois de dire la vérité, de dire les choses comme elles sont.»

In other words, Copé is uncritically relating anecdotes of a few Français de souche in Meaux (his electoral fief), of how some immigrant-origin kids once said something rude to them. Ce n’est vraiment pas très sérieux. But, again, what is particularly disturbing about this is not just the inanity of the notion of an “anti-white racism” but the readiness of mainstream politicians to speak about French society in such racialized terms (and where Copé et al would presumably identify themselves as “blanc“). This is new in France. That the UMP would so shamelessly raid the extreme right’s ideological tiroir-caisse and break a taboo in the process is not only reprehensible but alarming as well. La France est sur une bien mauvaise pente.

UPDATE: A Master’s student named Yann Solle has a good tribune in Slate.fr, ”«Racisme anti-blanc»: Jean-François Copé vide les mots de leur sens.”

2nd UPDATE: On the Nouvel Obs website Mohamed du Val d’Oise says ”‘Racisme anti-Blanc’ : M. Copé, je suis Arabe, laissez-moi vous expliquer le racisme.”

3rd UPDATE: Academic specialist of Great Britain Olivier Esteves has a tribune in Le Monde on “L’énorme ficelle du ‘racisme anti-Blanc’.” (October 1)

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The Amiens riot – II

In my post yesterday on the Amiens riot I linked to a report from the ground in Mediapart, in which the residents of the cité pointed the finger at the police—specifically the BAC and CRS—and its behavior, but also contrasted this with the agents of the Gendarmerie Nationale, who earned praise from the residents—adults and youths—for their comportment during a recent two-week patrol of the cité. Now Le Monde, in a dispatch from Amiens, echoed Mediapart’s report, of the cité residents being angry at the police—BAC and CRS—and its “cowboy” behavior, and making favorable reference to the agents of the Gendarmerie. Here’s the report, with noteworthy passages highlighted

“Ce soir-là, ils sont venus nous provoquer comme des cow-boys”
LE MONDE | 15.08.2012 à 14h11
Par Faïza Zeroual

Dans le quartier de la Briquetterie à Amiens-Nord, les stigmates des violences des nuits des 12 et 13 août sont encore visibles. Les cadavres de poubelles fondues collent au bitume. La salle de musculation a été incendiée, tout comme l’école maternelle Balzac, dont les fenêtres sont condamnées par des planches. Ici et là, des voitures calcinées ou du mobilier urbain dégradé. Mardi 14 août, quelques habitants sont réunis autour du kiosque, sous les arbres, et la tension est palpable. Un adolescent trouble ce calme fragile en traversant l’esplanade sur sa mini-moto.

Le quartier est en ébullition depuis le début du mois d’août. Mais la situation s’est brutalement dégradée après des incidents survenus lors d’un repas de deuil organisé dimanche par la famille de Nadir, 20 ans, mort jeudi 9 août dans un accident de moto. Assise dans le salon familial, la soeur de Nadir, Sabrina, 22 ans, raconte comment cette cérémonie a été troublée par les forces de l’ordre :“Nous étions tous réunis sur la terrasse de la maison de ma grand-mère lorsque les CRS sont arrivés. Tout l’après-midi, ils rôdaient ici, mais nous n’avons pas fait attention à eux.”

Les policiers contrôlaient un jeune homme qui conduisait en sens interdit. “Le contrôle a été très agressif. Mon père et mon oncle sont sortis pour leur demander de partir et de respecter notre deuil. Puis ça a dégénéré, la brigade anticriminalité nous a gazés avec des bombes lacrymogènes alors qu’il y avait des femmes et des enfants.”

L’un des invités montre sa blessure à la tempe, une bosse rouge et bleue, à la suite, assure-t-il, d’un tir de flash-ball. Les allées et venues des amis, de la famille, sont incessantes dans cette maisonnette au milieu des tours. Tous confirment la version de la famille. Fatma Hadji, la mère de Nadir, ne décolère pas. “Avec les gendarmes mobiles, tout se passait très bien. Ce soir-là il n’y avait pas lieu de faire un contrôle. Ils sont venus nous provoquer comme des cow-boys.”

DIALOGUE DE SOURDS

Les quartiers d’Amiens-Nord sont fragiles, ce qui a justifié leur classement dans les quinze zones prioritaires de sécurité, annoncées par Manuel Valls, le 4 août. Amiens-Nord est aussi une zone urbaine sensible (ZUS) et rassemble les critères des quartiers en difficulté : dans les ZUS de la ville le revenu fiscal moyen est inférieur à 9 000 euros, le taux de chômage dépasse 24 %, et la part des ménages non imposables tourne autour de 63 %.

M^me Hadji retrace en quelques phrases la vie de son fils. Il travaillait dans la restauration et aimait passer du temps dans la salle de sport incendiée. Elle reconnaît qu’il a eu affaire à la justice. Mais jure-t-elle, il s’était assagi.

Mardi, M^me Hadji et sa fille ont été reçues par Manuel Valls, le ministre de l’intérieur à l’Atrium, l’antenne de la mairie de quartier au coeur d’Amiens-Nord. Une rencontre décevante et “injuste” : “C’était un dialogue de sourds. Les forces de l’ordre ont commis l’irréparable, mais il n’est pas question pour le ministre d’y toucher. Il oublie la nuit de dimanche. On a été gazés comme des sauvages, comme des bêtes.”

Lors de la visite du ministre de l’intérieur, une centaine de personnes s’est massée aux abords de l’Atrium. Les jeunes sont remontés, peu enclins à parler. L’un d’eux, amer, raconte les contrôles de police incessants, le sentiment de ne pas être respecté, le manque de dialogue avec la police, l’absence de perspectives, le chômage…

Nawel, une amie de la famille qui “considérait Nadir comme son fils”, est consternée par les scènes de violence : “Ceux qui ont brûlé la salle de musculation ce ne sont pas nos jeunes. Ils y sont tous abonnés car il n’y a rien d’autre pour eux.”

Les jeunes des quartiers alentours se sont greffés aux affrontements. Amiens-Nord est régulièrement sujet à des pics de tension. En octobre 2010, une dizaine d’habitants avaient caillassé les policiers pendant une nuit, sans raison précise, ou connue. Un an plus tôt, en mai 2009, ce même quartier avait déjà été le théâtre de violences après la mort d’un jeune motard pourchassé par la police. En février, une voiture de la police municipale a été incendiée, puis un second véhicule a subi le même traitement, et une quinzaine d’habitants du quartier ont affronté les policiers à coup de projectiles.

Aujourd’hui, Fatma Hadji ne croit pas que ces troubles vont s’apaiser : “La France va bouger. On n’est rien ici. Les jeunes sont déjà mal dans leur peau, ils n’ont rien à perdre”, prophétise-t-elle. Mardi soir, 250 agents étaient déployés sur le terrain pour tenter de ramener le calme à Amiens-Nord.

Faïza Zerouala

The contrast between the services of the Police Nationale (BAC, CRS)—which come under the authority of the Ministry of Interior—and the Gendarmerie Natonale—a paramilitary police force under the exclusive tutelary authority of the Ministry of Defense until 2009—is striking. This reminded me of Mathieu Kassovitz’s fine 2011 film ‘L’Ordre et la morale’, that reenacts the 1988 Ouvéa hostage crisis in New Caledonia and where a distinction was made between the behavior of the regular military (bad) and that of the Gendarmerie (good). I will come back to this at a later date (perhaps when I get around to writing about Kassovitz’s film). What Mme Hadji said above about the meeting with Manuel Valls is revealing. Valls is certainly more than aware of the “cowboy” behavior of the police—and of its share of responsibility in provoking the clashes—but, as interior minister, he can hardly acknowledge it publicly, or even privately to a citizen. It is a difficult and delicate matter for a government minister to take on the corps of fonctionnaires under his authority. Or, rather, under his temporary, fleeting authority, as ministers come and go but the corps de l’État remain (and collectively they know their corps and its tutelary ministry better than just about any minister). Valls has already been backpedaling on the Ayrault government’s proposal to have the police issue a récépisée to any person subjected to an identity check (see here), as the reaction of the police syndicats to this was negative in the extreme.

One of the cité residents interviewed in the dispatch said that the torching of the gym facility during the riot could not have been the doing of the youths in the cité, as they are all members and users of it, further adding that youths from outside the area came to participate in the clashes. This has been reported in numerous riots over the years: of gangs of youths from other cités—and who are often rivals of the youths in the cité where the clash with the police is occurring—rushing to participate in the bedlam, but also to settle scores and commit arson in an area that is outside their territory. Another factor. A reportage in the 11 March 2010 issue of Le Monde—following a violent incident in a cité in Epernay—focused on the outsized responsibility for a lot of the violence, vandalism, and arson of small groups of sociopathic youths—sometimes only a dozen youths in number—that are at the margins even in the cité, not to mention society at large. The youths, the Le Monde report specified, are mainly of black African origin, all school dropouts (often with only an 8th or 9th grade education) and unskilled, unemployed for the most part, and come from homes where the father is absent and the mother has several children in her charge. For these youths, acts of violence and vandalism are less an inchoate expression of rage against the system than a simple engagement in violence and vandalism for the sake of it, or in a surenchère with other gangs, and whose action is fueled, as it were, by gangsta rappers (which has become a French musical sub-genre). For Americans, this will sound familiar. One thing is for sure. In view of the economic situation in France, the problems in the cités are not going to go away any time soon. And governments—of the left or right—will continue to have no good idea of what to do about them.

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The Amiens riot

For those who haven’t been following the news the past few days, there was yet another riot in a French banlieue cité (yawn, what else is new?), this one on Monday night in Amiens. It was the same dreary story: a pack of policemen have an encounter with one or several Maghrebi or African immigrant origin young males—usually a demand for the latter to produce their ID cards—, the young males react badly, the police get nervous and call in the reinforcements, packs of young Maghrebi and/or African immigrant origin males from the cité gather and pelt the packs of policemen with projectiles, the more thuggish elements among the youths profit from the disorder to vandalize or torch public establishments (notably schools) or other symbols of the state—and do a little pillaging of stores while they’re at it—, all hell breaks out—though in a circumscribed area and with firearms and violent deaths extremely rare; we’re not talking about South Central L.A.-style riots here—, the Minister of Interior arrives the next day and praises the action of the police, residents of the cité complain to TV reporters about drug dealing gangs but also the behavior of the police, the situation calms down after a day or two, until the next riot breaks out somewhere else in the country and that follows more or less the same script…

Another constant here is the reaction of foreign observers, who misunderstand the situation in France, misinterpret the causes of the riots, and/or ask the wrong questions (e.g. see this commentary on Amiens and with my reaction in the comments thread).

But if there is a commonality to French riots, each one is set off by a particular spark and may have a specificity or two. This report on Amiens in Mediapart is particularly interesting I think. Note the anger of the residents of the cité toward the police—and which was abundant in last night’s France 2 news report on the riot—but also how they and the jeunes differentiate the behavior of the gendarmes from that of the CRS riot police. The gendarmes who enter the cité behave correctly: they are polite and say hello. This makes all the difference. 

À Amiens, Valls demande «l’ordre républicain» et les habitants une police moins «provocatrice»
15 août 2012 | Par Louise Fessard

Amiens, de notre envoyée spéciale

Après une nuit d’émeutes dans les quartiers Nord d’Amiens, le ministre de l’intérieur, Manuel Valls, est arrivé mardi 14 août en milieu d’après-midi à l’Atrium, la mairie annexe, pour rencontrer

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Deputies of diversity

Députés de la diversité, i.e. deputies of non-European immigrant origin. I wrote on Sunday night that the first Maghrebi/Muslim deputy since 1962 (Algeria’s independence) had just been elected to the National Assembly. In classroom lectures over the years on immigration and Islam in France, I have rhetorically asked my students how many of the 577 deputies in the National Assembly are Muslims—who account for some 7% of the population (and of which Maghrebis are some four-fifths)—, to which I then give the answer: zero. As it happens, there is now not just one but as many as six, and all from the PS. I cited Malek Boutih, the former head of SOS Racisme, born in France to Algerian parents, who was elected from the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois constituency in the Essonne (in the southern banlieues of Paris, previously represented by his erstwhile SOS Racisme mentor, Julian Dray). Boutih has had an increasingly high “diversity” profile in the PS over the past decade and this wasn’t his first attempt at elective office. The other newly elected diversity deputies are Razzy Hammadi, a former head of the PS youth wing (MJS), of Algerian and Tunisian origin, and who defeated the longtime Communist deputy Jean-Pierre Brard in Montreuil (in the neuf-trois); Kheira Bouziane, born in Algeria before independence, who was elected in one of the Dijon constituencies; Chaynesse Khirouni, born in post-independence Algeria and who arrived in France at age 20, elected in Nancy; Kader Arif, born in Algeria, a fils de harki, elected in the Haute-Garonne (though as he is in the government—as minister délégué of war veterans—, he will be ceding his seat to his suppléant); and Seybah Dagoma, born to immigrant parents from Chad and elected in Paris (3e-10e arr.).

To these one may add Pouria Amirshahi, born in Iran in the 1970s and whose parents fled the Shah’s regime, elected in the overseas constituency for North and West Africa; and Eduardo Rihan Cypel, born and raised in Brazil to age ten, elected in the Torcy constituency of the Seine-et-Marne. Some news articles have added George Pau-Lengevin (reelected in Paris 20e arr. and currently in the government), Hélène Geoffroy (elected in Vaulx-en-Velin), and Corinne Narassigiun (elected in the overseas USA-Canada constituency) as diversity deputies, but they all hail from overseas departments (Guadeloupe for the first two, Reunion the latter), so as native-born French citizens they don’t count.

A couple of remarks. These newly elected deputies were elected in single-member constituencies, not on a list in a proportional representation system (which is the norm in Europe, and that makes minority representation in legislative assemblies much easier to assure). Though they were slated by the PS and which financed their campaigns, they had to wage them on their own. Also, with the exception of Hammadi’s in Montreuil, none of these constituencies have large concentrations of immigrant communities from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa. The kind of gerrymandering that happens in the US—to create majority Black or Latino constituencies—is not only legally impossible and politically inconceivable in France but would be difficult to pull off, as areas with concentrations of “diversity” populations contain large numbers of non-citizens, who would thus not be able to vote.

On the above Muslim deputies, I have no idea if any actually practice the religion (I would rather doubt it for most). As it is a near taboo in France for a politician to publicly discuss his or her religious faith (if s/he has one), one is not likely to find out. As for them being identity Muslims—of saying they are Muslim if the question is put to them—I am simply assuming this. So unless and until any of the Maghreb-origin deputies publicly declare themselves not to be Muslim, I will declare that they are.

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Lilian Thuram: battling racism in soccer and society

On the occasion of the Euro 2012 and the French national team’s first game—vs. England, which I am watching as I write—here is an in-depth interview, in Sports Illustrated (h/t Peter Gray), with France’s beloved Lilian Thuram on his high-profile campaign against racism in sports and society, which he launched during his illustrious career (with clubs in France, Italy, and Spain, and, above all, the French national team). As a player he will forever be remembered for his two back-to-back goals in the 1998 World Cup semi-final against Croatia, that allowed Les Bleus to proceed to the final and clean Brazil’s clock. He was as stunned as everyone by his feat (photo), as he was a defender and thus not known for scoring goals. A glorious, albeit fleeting, moment in the contemporary history of France…

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Contrôle au faciès

[update below] [2nd update below]

i.e. police identity checks based on how one looks, a.k.a. ethnic/racial profiling. This has long been a practice of the French police. It is inscribed in its DNA. One sees it on the streets and metro/train stations of France almost every day. And if one is dark-skinned or looks even vaguely non-white, it is often experienced every day, even several times a day (I have personally experienced it four times, though not in some twenty years). Demands to produce ID by cops—and there are always several of them, as the police in France travel in packs—are never accompanied with a justification. They are not motivated by a suspicion that one may have committed a crime, or that one may be a particular person the police are looking for, or may even be an illegal alien. One is controlled, as it were, for no other reason than one is black or looks Maghrebi. That’s it. It’s a reflex, just something the French police do because that’s what they’ve always done. It’s part of the culture of French policing. And when it happens, one is well-advised not to ask why one is being controlled, as one risks being arrested for outrage à agent public—of behaving disrespectfully toward a person invested with public authority, a misdemeanor (délit) in the Code Pénal—, prosecuted, fined, and possibly sentenced to up to six months in prison.

The contrôle au faciès—the practice of which is, in fact, illegal, on paper at least (but try proving it)—is, not surprisingly, bitterly resented by France’s Maghrebi and African/Antillean-origin population, and particularly by the younger generation. It is the principal factor in the execrable relations between those populations and the police—and that is often played out in rioting—, and is one of the factors in the more general alienation felt by so many toward the institutions of the French state. The French police are hated by a part of the citizenry in a way one does not see elsewhere. On this score, France is one of the very few democratic states where the police systematically demand IDs of people who are simply minding their own business. E.g. I read last year (I don’t have the source handy) that during a Franco-German police exchange program, German police agents visiting France were astonished to observe their French counterparts carrying out ID checks on the street, as it would never occur to a German cop to ask for someone’s ID unless an actual offense had been committed. For this reason, among others, I have long insisted that the French police are the worst in the Western world.

But, lo and behold, change may be on the way. PM Jean-Marc Ayrault announced yesterday that the government, following through on a pledge made by François Hollande during the campaign, was preparing a decree that would require the police to issue a receipt (récépisée) to any person subjected to an ID check, specifying the reasons for the check, and with the cop’s name. Excellent initiative! The police unions are all up in arms at the prospect, protesting that it will complicate their work—though such a law has existed in the UK since 1984, where it doesn’t seem to pose a problem for the police—and is totally unnecessary in any case, as they are absolutely not racist (my, who would ever think such a thing!). And not surprisingly, the police are being backed by the right on this (e.g. on BFM last night, Le Figaro editorialist Yves Thréard—quel réac—was denouncing the government’s plan). Let’s hope Ayrault and Manuel Valls hold firm and don’t cave in to the police syndicats. Affaire à suivre.

For more on this subject, see the report by Human Rights Watch from last January, “The Root of Humiliation”: Abusive Identity Checks in France (pour la traduction française du rapport, voir ici).

UPDATE: Arthur Goldhammer has linked to this post on his French Politics blog and which has engendered several substantive comments. I am taking the liberty of copying-and-pasting one of them, signed by Philippe, as I identify entirely with what he has written

The contrôle d’identité is as French as le gigot d’agneau . Growing up in Paris I witnessed hundreds of occasions where contingents of flics, stationed in some strategic corridor at Gare Montparnasse or Gare du Nord would arbitrarily stop anyone deemed suspicious. In 15 years in New York I’ve never seen a single instance of someone being stopped and asked to produce leurs papiers. I’m aware of the stop and frisk controversy but it is controversial and quite exceptional compared to what occurs on French streets (not that it shouldn’t be stopped).

Actually, the behavior of the French police and the docility of the French public is a continuous source of amazement and (mild) outrage for me and as an amateur photographer I try to document it whenever possible. This leads to uncomfortable situations.

On my last visit to France in December I saw two police officers run out of a parked car and arbitrarily pounce on an unsuspecting Scandinavian tourist who happened to be loitering on the sidewalk. They brutally pushed him against a wall and demanded that he produce ID. Note that this person had done nothing. They let him go after the check. I took a photo – you can see it here.

It is not illegal to photograph the police but one of the officers nonetheless took issue with what I was doing. You can see her hand in the photo – trying to block me from taking the shot. I told her had the right photograph. She demanded that I leave and I asked: under what ordinance or law ? She threatened to arrest me. At that point a friend pulled me away. This was quite shocking to me -she actually put her hand on the camera. I take dozens of shots of police every year in NY (and throughout the world) without incident (and I have the photos to back this up). In France however, any attempt to photograph the police invariably leads to “qu’est ce que vous faites ?” or “non, c’est interdit” or “dégagez” or “circulez” or, my favorite, because of what it reveals about the relationship of the French with authority and official statuses : “Vous êtes journaliste ?” This was the first time however that an officer acted out physically against me.

I want to add two related anecdotes of my own, both of which occurred at my RER station, in a banlieue close to the city. In the first, from two or three years ago, I entered the hall of the station during PM rush hour—so there were a lot people—and saw a dozen or so cops, who were not there because anything in particular had happened but just to control IDs of persons they felt like controlling. An utterly banal, typical scene in France. There was a loud dispute going on between a couple of the cops and a person they were controlling, a middle-aged black man, normally dressed, and who, given the way he was speaking French, was manifestly not an undocumented immigrant from Mali, the Congo, or wherever. Nor had he hopped the turnstile—a venerable French sport—, as he was not being issued a ticket. The man was visibly very angry that he was being controlled—manifestly for the misdemeanor of being black—and was demanding to know why. I stopped to watch the scene but within a minute one of the loitering cops came over to me, glared, and ordered me to “circulez” (to move on). I wanted to tell him that I was a citizen minding his own business, that this was a public place—is there any place more public than a train station at rush hour?—, and that I had every right to stand there, but quickly thought better of it, as I would have very likely been arrested illico and charged with outrage. Welcome to France.

Second anecdote, from a few months ago. Entering the station in the morning, there were several cops who had a young black male against the wall past the turnstiles (which he had probably hopped). A man was filming the spectacle with his mobile phone. When the cops—who were RATP police, not Police Nationale—saw him they ordered him to stop. He refused, saying he had every right to do it and was going to post it on the Internet. He then headed up the escalator to the platform and with the half-dozen cops pursing him. At the top of the escalator they demanded that he turn over the phone or else they would call the regular police. They were very agitated, clearly more concerned about having been filmed while they were doing their job than in continuing to do their job (as they no doubt left behind the young man they were controlling and enabled others to hop the turnstile in their absence). As the train arrived and I had to get to work, I didn’t see the denouement. Another banal, typical day in the life of the French police and its interface with the citizenry.

One comment on what Philippe said about New York: He has no doubt not personally witnessed any stop-and-frisks by the NYPD, as these mainly happen in minority-dominated parts of town, not on the streets or subway stations of Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, etc.

2nd UPDATE: Art Goldhammer has a follow-up post on my above update and with some very good comments of his own, including this

But there is a difference between the behavior of the police in the US and the police in France. The French police seem to make a point of conducting checks in very public places: in railroad and Metro stations, on busy streets, etc. And often they go out of their way to make it clear that there is no particular reason for the check. It has always seemed to me that there was a reason for this publicity: the police wanted their action to be visible, they intended to assert that, even if they might not have the right to do what they were doing, they had the authority, since no one would or could stop them.

Art nails it here. The police do their controls in very public places precisely because they want to be seen doing it and not only to assert their authority. I am reminded here of an article I read in Le Monde or Libé in 1994 or ’95—Charles Pasqua was interior minister at the time—, when there was a fear of terrorism from Algeria spilling into France (and which did happen). The police were carrying out ID controls on Maghrebis on a massive scale, not only on the streets and metro stations but also stopping cars driven by Maghrebi lookers. The main reason for this mass contrôle au faciès, as the article quoted someone in the know as saying—I have the article filed away somewhere, so I could eventually verify—, was less to nab suspected terrorists than to reassure the population. In other words, the police controlled the Arabs because they assumed, probably correctly, that regular French folks wanted to see them doing so, to know that the police were doing their job, as it were. And that the Français moyens would wholeheartedly approve of the police action here. As they did, e.g., on the sinister evening of October 17, 1961, when Parisian passers-by applauded the police as they clubbed and brutalized Algerian men, women, and children peacefully marching. When it comes to the French police and persons hailing from French colonies, past and present, there is a history…

A (rhetorical) question: do French voters or politicians—or the police themselves—comprehend what a huge waste of time and resources the identity control operations represent? That having dozens of police agents controlling IDs for no good purpose—and diverting them away from catching criminals—is not an optimal use of the taxpayer’s euro?

BTW, I found what Claude Guéant said in the Le Monde article Art linked to absolutely breathtaking. This is a big difference between the right and the left. And is yet one more reminder of why I am on the latter and can never be on the former.

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The Muslim vote

I somehow missed this one—there wasn’t much mention of it, or maybe it just passed under my radar screen—but a poll on the “sociology of the 2nd round” conducted on May 6th by OpinionWay-Fiducial for Le Figaro and released the next day showed that 93% of French Muslims voted for François Hollande on Sunday (see the article here and the full poll report here). The poll used the CAWI survey technique and had a sample of 9,582. It doesn’t give the percentage of those polled who identified as Muslims but it was likely on the order of 4 or 5% max (4% of Frenchmen have identified as Muslims in polls taken over the past few years, though if non-citizens are included the veritable figure is probably closer to 7%). Maghrebis/Muslims have traditionally voted for the left but not in their near totality as was the case on Sunday. There was clearly a vote de sanction against Sarkozy for his anti-Islam/anti-immigrant discourse. If Sarko had maintained his rhetoric on Islam and the republic such as it was earlier in the last decade, which I’ve written about on this blog, and not lurched to the frontiste hard right, he could have won over a significant minority of Muslim voters, particularly as Muslims are socially conservative and have no love for the Socialists, the PS having never gone out of its way to cultivate them. Insofar as Sarkozy’s anti-Islam demagoguery did not win over more FN voters than the candidate of the right has historically received in the second round of presidential elections—the transfer of Le Pen votes to Sarkozy was around the same as in 2007, and to Chirac in 1995—these lost Muslim votes, as it were, may have even cost Sarkozy the election. Not smart.

The OpinionWay poll also gave a breakdown of Catholic voters (practicing and non-practicing) and Protestants but not Jews, probably because their numbers are too small (I’ve written about the “Jewish vote” here). Sarkozy most certainly won a comfortable majority, though I doubt it was as high as the 93% from French voters in Israel (see preceding post). With Sarko gone, a certain number of those Jews will likely gravitate back to the Socialists. On verra.

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L’exception marseillaise

[update below]

Karl E. Meyer, a former member of the NYT editorial board, has an op-ed in the NYT today on immigrant integration and non-integration in France. Not a new or underexamined topic but very much de l’actualité these days, in view of the anti-immigration/anti-Islam demagoguery under Sarkozy’s presidency (and particularly during the current campaign). Meyer says

These opposing approaches to what it means to be French — one rooted in an uncompromising ideal of assimilation, the other grounded in the messy realities of multiculturalism — struck a chord with me. While researching a book on the politics of diversity with my wife, Shareen Blair Brysac, I encountered not only the exclusionary attitude prevailing in metropolitan Paris, but also the more tolerant worldview epitomized by the port city of Marseille — a worldview that the rest of France would be well served to embrace.

When it comes to immigration/ethnicity/race, Marseille really is exceptional in France, in that français de souche are likely a minority (and many, if not most, white folks there—apologies for the Americanism—have recent origins in Corsica, Spain, Italy, North Africa pied noir, Armenia, Greece, Lebanon, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, etc.; and as there are no banlieues to which poorer immigrant-origin populations are relegated, everyone lives in the city). The Marseille exception, which is well-known in France—though is not necessarily presented as a model to emulate—, was the subject of three lengthy and admiring articles by American journalists in the last decade (two of whom are conservatives): Christopher Caldwell in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Tayler in Harper’s, and Claire Berlinski in Azure. Even though a few years old they’re worth reading (although two are unfortunately behind subscriber walls; if I find free links to them, will post).

UPDATE: The full text of Claire Berlinski’s article is here.

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