Europe News
French police say suburban ghettoes remain very tense
By DPA
Oct 23, 2006, 13:52 GMT

Paris - One year after minority youths in French suburban ghettoes rioted for three weeks, the situation in these poor neighbourhoods remains very tense, the security branch of the national police, or RG, said Monday.

'Most of the conditions which, one year ago, led to the collective violence over large parts of mainland France still exist,' said an RG report dated October 11 cited by the daily Le Figaro.

The report is particularly pessimistic about the situation in the suburbs ringing Paris, where last year's riots broke out.

It notes that the likelihood of a renewal of rioting and its spreading depends to a large extent on how the tense situation in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, just north of the capital, is handled 'in the coming days.'

It was in Clichy-sous-Bois where, on October 25, 2005, two minority youths died from accidental electrocution after hiding out in a transformer shed while apparently fleeing from police.

Their deaths provoked three weeks of rioting in more than 300 communities throughout France, and led to the government imposing a state of emergency on many towns and cities.

'We have noticed the beginning of a renewal of urban violence after the summer calm,' the police report noted, referring to several clashes between gangs of youths and police officers.

While last year's violence appeared, on the whole, to have been spontaneous, the report evokes the likelihood of violent flare-ups that are 'structured and targeting one of the last institutional representatives still present in certain areas: the police.'