France: Strasbourg, a city of about 450,000 people, starkly illustrates the gulf between rich and poor, immigrant and native, writes Jamie Smyth, European Correspondent
The smell of charred wood still hung in the air at Saint-Benoit church yesterday as a workman boarded up the door that took the full impact of a petrol bomb thrown the night before.
Chaplain Jean-Claude Heinrich shook his head as he took out a last batch of cinders, scooped off the floor of the beautiful ornate church. It is already dark outside and he is hoping that the youths that attacked the church on Monday aren't coming back. "This is the first time we have been affected by this type of trouble," he says.
"But in the past few days they have attacked two schools in Hautepierre and burnt 15 cars." Hautepierre, an economically-deprived suburb of Strasbourg, is well-known for acts of vandalism and occasional spontaneous outbursts of violence. Unemployment is high among the 20,000 people who live in the flat complexes that dominate the estates.
"People living here don't normally feel in danger, but from time to time it erupts into violence," says Heinrich, who has a congregation of 200 Catholics from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. "There are people from 64 different national groups living in Hautepierre from most religious backgrounds and usually there has been a tradition of Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims getting on well together in this area." However, undercurrents of religious tension are felt regularly in Strasbourg, where Jewish graves have been attacked in recent years and controversy still surrounds a plan to build a mosque in the town, several years after it was first planned.
"I don't think the current difficulties are the results of a religious war," says Heinrich. "But when people attack a church it could spark something off."
Mohsen Ayathi, a member of an Islamic rights group based in Strasbourg called the Association Islamic est France, says the current problems are not a religious issue, but a society problem. The politics of integration just aren't working in France, he says.
Strasbourg, a city of about 450,000 people, starkly illustrates the gulf between rich and poor, immigrant and native.
The opulence of the European parliament building stands just a few kilometres north from the grinding poverty that pervades the poorest Strasbourg suburb called Neuhof.
The blue and white paint on the walls of the flat complexes is peeling off in large chunks, graffiti screams out from every second stairway, and at least one drug dealer is working the area in front of the districts small supermarket as I arrive to talk to locals.
"There is no work and there is discrimination," says Jules King, a 36-year-old immigrant from Equatorial Guinea who lives in the neighbourhood. "The young people living here don't know anything better. They think no one cares about them, all day long they don't do anything, just smoke and take drugs." Jules King is looking for work but he is not optimistic. "They [ Government] haven't done anything to change the situation. I hope to meet a job one day."
The groups of youths that congregate around the shopping centre during the daytime also have little hope of a better future.
"There is no work here and you get harassed by the police," says Jamel, originally from Tunisia. Several other youths also complain about a heavy police presence in the district, although in the two hours I spend in Neuhof I see just one police car driving around.
The mention of the interior ministers' name Nicolas Sarkozy brings forth a deluge of expletives from the youths. "About Sarkozy he doesn't speak with a good language. It is a problem," says Jamel.
The local government in Strasbourg is now working on plans to revitalise Neuhof and there are new building projects springing up on the edge of the district. It can also point to the fact that the district, which started a tradition of torching cars on New Year's Eve in Strasburg in the 1990s, has stayed relatively quiet this week.
"Its pretty quiet here," says Ann Premel, a spokeswoman for the mayor. "We had a string of instances of urban violence in the past, but this year we have not had big problems like other areas." As dusk falls in Neuhof and Hautepierre locals hope her words ring true and the youths stay at home tonight.