Baghdad, France: A warehouse burns in Aubervilliers in the outskirts of Paris.
France remained gripped on Monday by rioting between immigrants and police in the banlieue ghettos that skirt Paris. On Sunday, rioters shot 10 police officers in scenes that would seem more at home in south-central Los Angeles than in the idyllic French capital. By the end of the weekend, more than 1,300 cars had been burned out and the rage had spread to the heart of Paris. The rioting continued into Monday and claimed its first victim, a man who was attacked by rioters as he tried to put out a trash can fire in Clichy-sous-Bois.
Thankfully, German papers steer well clear of "clash of civilizations" style coverage and, refreshingly, there are few clichés to be found about Clichy. Where they do stumble, however, led by the mass-circulation tabloid Bild, is is asking the inevitable nightly news question: Could this happen here? Bild sticks its reporters notebook right in the face of incoming German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble of the Christian Democratic Union. "Conditions in France are different than here," he tells the paper, noting that Germany doesn't have any sprawling ghetto apartment complexes like the French banlieues. But he does warn that "in Germany, too, there are immigrant areas that are becoming increasingly shut off from the rest of society" and that integration must be improved. No serious incidents have occurred in Germany following the French riots, but police in Berlin are investigating the mysterious arson of five cars on Sunday night -- incidents that could have been copycat crimes.
Fresh on the heels of the "multiculti is dead" campaign it launched last year after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the conservative daily Die Welt chisels away at the French system of integration, which was long held up as a model for Europe. "The French were often praised for their republican integration model according to which the pride of the great nation would give everyone a joint identity if they could master the language, take on citizenship, accept religious neutrality and enter the schools in a spirit of law and civility," the paper writes. It goes on to argue that the French model is more ineffective than others in Europe. Elsewhere on the continent, most immigrant violence happens in parallel societies -- there are honor killings within families, fights between rival ethnic gangs and assassinations of people accused of disparaging Allah. But in France, the attacks are against the state and its institutions -- the country's "miracle weapons" for integration. The paper then goes on to draw a comparison to race riots in the United States. "Europe has to face up to the kind of situation that the US was confronted with during the 1960s race riots," it writes. "But what's worse is that, unlike then, 'emancipation' is no magic word anymore. The French already have civil rights." What the paper doesn't note, however, is the success of immigration in America, which has a model of citizenship and national pride very similar to that of France.
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, uses the crisis as an opportunity to call for a new public debate on immigration and integration in Europe. For the past week, the paper opines, you've been hearing the usual oversimplifications from sociologists -- that the agitators need to be given "prospects" in life. "No one would deny that these people lack prospects," the paper concedes, "but who is supposed to offer them these prospects?" Jobs are created by companies and industry, not Sarkozy. "One of the greatest dishonesties of European policy and intellectual discourse," the paper concludes, "has been that multicultural issues can only be discussed in one direction -- the 'accepting society'. Whoever calls on the immigrants themselves to integrate better is seen as a nationalist monster who lacks 'openness.'"
The leftist Die Tageszeitung looks at France and Germany and warns that any German who thinks this couldn't happen here needs to take a closer look at the parallels that do exist between the countries. "Despite the differences between France and Germany, there is one core similarity," the paper observes. "In both countries, entire sections of society are becoming impoverished. Politically and socially they are increasingly shut off from the prosperous rest of the population," it adds. The paper calls this a policy of "social apartheid" that disproportionately affects the descendents of immigrants and adds that this is, unfortunately, "the political dogma in all European Union countries." It concludes by warning that immigrants in other ghettos in Europe could follow the example of the "self-confident" rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The police had better be prepared, too. The dominant images of the events in France have been those of competent rioters and incompetent cops who have been unable to restore order to the Parisian suburbs. This is what appalls the Financial Times Deutschland. "Under the watch of the state, the suburbs are threatening to splinter off from the state and become 'lawless zones' as (French Interior Minister Nicolas) Sarkozy calls them or a zone with its own law," the paper warns. That, of course, would have nothing to do with a functioning civil society. "It may be comfortable for the state to leave problem areas to fend for themselves in the short term," the paper writes, "but the price in the long-term would be a total loss of state authority." The paper then appeals on French leaders to use force to restore order.
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung takes shots at Sarkozy for fanning the flames of the riots with his insensitive comments about the rioters. Now, the paper warns, the rioters have a target for their hate. To them, Sarkozy, who called the rioters "scum" and "riffraff," embodies exactly the evil they are battling against. Sarkozy may be a politician who regrets nothing, but this crisis may yet bite him in the ass. "Will he still be the candidate with the best chances of succeeding Jacques Chirac once the crisis has past?" the paper asks. Some are already calling for his resignation. But it's unlikely Chirac will let his interior minister fall prey to the masses. Pragmatically, the paper says the president must appear before the nation and do more than just read pre-written statements. But the Süddeutsche doubts the moral authority he holds as president will be enough to stop the chaos. "The republic is helpless," it concludes.
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