Paris station turns into guerrilla battlefield

FRANCE:Racial tension becomes an election issue after the Gare du Nord riot, writes Lara Marlowein Paris

The battle of the Gare du Nord lasted eight hours, from late afternoon on Tuesday until early yesterday morning. By the time it was over, 13 people were arrested, including five minors. Nine policemen and public transport workers were injured. The underground shopping centre and corridors of the train station were littered with broken glass and debris.

For France, 3½ weeks before presidential elections, Tuesday night's riot was a harsh reminder of the urban unrest of November 2005. The political right saw the violence as vindication of UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's law and order and anti-immigration policies.

The train station riot, like incidents surrounding the arrest of a Chinese grandfather outside a school last week, "say a great deal about the atmosphere of incomprehension, distrust and tension that has set in between the police and a part of the population", said Le Monde'seditorial. The "firmness" which Mr Sarkozy boasts of "is experienced, more and more frequently, as a revolting brutality", France's newspaper of record added.

Around 4.30pm on Tuesday, two ticket inspectors stopped a Congolese man who jumped over barriers in the metro to avoid paying his fare. The interior ministry yesterday announced that he is a 32-year-old illegal alien and repeat offender who is under an expulsion order.

The Gare du Nord is a hub for traffic to the immigrant banlieues, and large numbers of police are usually present. By some accounts, the Congolese man tried to headbutt one of the ticket inspectors. He was dragged several dozen metres to a police post in the station while passengers shouted, "Let him go. Let him go." A crowd of angry teenagers surrounded the office. Some offered to pay the fare-evader's fine. When large numbers of police reinforcements arrived, fighting broke out between hundreds of youths and police.

In the hours that followed, the station became an urban guerrilla battlefield, with shielded, helmeted police making baton charges against the youths who taunted them with obscene chants about Mr Sarkozy.

The tunnels and multiple floors gave the advantage to the rioters, who pelted police with soft drink cans and iron bars. They tore out video surveillance cameras, destroyed a photo booth and used benches to smash shop windows. The Foot Locker store was looted. A potted palm tree crashed from the mezzanine to the floor below. Traffic was interrupted on two metro lines and two RER suburban train lines. When they were finally driven out of the station after midnight, the rioters started fires in surrounding streets.

Passengers caught in the riot posted mobile telephone videos and their personal accounts of events on the internet. Several criticised riot police. Bastien Boischard told how he was attacked by several youths when he refused to hand over his mobile phone, in front of a line of riot police. "They were hitting me, about 15 or 20 metres from the security forces, who didn't bother to intervene," he wrote.

Police then instructed Mr Boischard to file a complaint at the nearest commissariat. "I should have filed two complaints: one against the aggressors, the other against the police for failing to help someone in danger," he said.

Soufiane Aziz watched rioters break into four shops as police stood by. "People there were disgusted that police let the rioters do what they wanted," he wrote.

Another blogger saw a terrified group of foreign tourists huddling on a metro platform.

"What kind of country has France become for things to explode so violently, for nothing?" wrote Christine Casas, a 52-year-old teacher. She found a little girl who did not speak French lying on the ground, sobbing in a corner.

Photographs and video footage of the violence showed that many of the rioters were African or North African Arabs, a taboo subject to which French media barely alluded.

The anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, extreme right-wing presidential candidate Philippe de Villiers said the battle at the Gare du Nord was caused by "unbridled immigration" and blamed "ethnic bands" and "barbarians" for the destruction.

Immigration has resurfaced as an issue in the presidential campaign since the Chinese grandfather was arrested outside a Paris school last week. As interior minister in 2006, Mr Sarkozy legalised close to 7,000 immigrants whose children were enrolled in French schools; 26,000 other applicants were rejected, and were supposed to leave the country. But groups such as Education Without Borders fought their expulsion.

The socialist candidate Ségolène Royal created an uproar by saying she would grant legal residence to the parents and grandparents of all children enrolled in French schools. Illegal immigrants - the sans-papiers - are a red-hot, emotional issue, and the socialists back-tracked, saying they would work on a case-by-case basis.

Tomorrow, teachers' unions will go on strike and demonstrate against the arrest of illegal immigrants outside schools, and in support of the school principal who was charged with insulting police and hitting a police car when the Chinese grandfather was arrested.