Lyons - What Really Happened?

No one seem to know for sure. And this applies to the other cities as well. Was this rioting staged? Semi-staged? Spontaneous? Was the bulk of the damage done by the "young persons" of the ghettos, or by the high-school students protesting retirement reform? What do 16-year-olds know or care about retirement reform? The message boards are full of speculation. Was this set up by Sarkozy, so that he can appear to be cracking down on crime? Or to gain support for his social reforms? Or to destabilize? But France is already destabilized, so what is the point? Possibly to frighten people into rallying behind Sarkozy simply because he is a known quantity.

I found this event confusing, and difficult to encapsulate accurately.

I have received via e-mail some links that may be of interest to those who read French. One of them is comment #770 by a François Desouche reader named Herr Satz:

In the coming days, we might witness an increase in acts of violence alongside these demonstrations. Our "young persons" have tasted blood, and now want more, while the powers that be allow the situation to become more poisonous (deliberately?).

It's difficult to determine the political tactics behind this obvious laxness.

While the high-school movement will predictably decline on its own with the arrival of the vacation period, and the kids with blond hair will soon return to the warmth of their homes with Mom and Dad and their video games, nothing indicates that our good old "vandals" will not continue on their rampage.

With the high schools closed for vacation, the police, deprived of all legitimacy, could then intervene should our brave young Arabs continue to go shopping.

Note: The above is barely a translation. He does not say "Arabs", he says "pépites", which can mean a gold nuggets, or chocolate chips. Since the French have been told to think of immigrants as a great good fortune for the country, possibly Herr Satz is referring to them as gold nuggets (sarcastically, of course). If, however, there is a reference to skin color - brown, or at least tawny, then he could be calling them chocolate chips (facetiously, of course). As for "going shopping", he uses the expression "faire leur souk" - to go to the souk, referring to the pillage of shops and the theft of merchandise. And why do the police no longer have legitimacy? Because without ethnic French kids to arrest, they are powerless. They are presumably under orders not to harm the Arabs (or whoever the "young persons" happen to be - Arab, Berber, black, etc...)

If a French reader would like to help me out with the translation, please do.

Note: Please see the first reader's comment below for a clarification of "pépites".

Herr Satz goes on:

A small eruption of violence just before the vacation would be a very good strategy for Sarkozy: he would discreetly ask the police to do everything in their power, on Friday afternoon (October 22), to trigger a little bit of pillaging by the "CPF" (i.e., the immigrants), and to set the suburbs on fire, at the very moment when the real young people (i.e., the white French students) have temporarily put aside their demands while they enjoy their vacation.

Note: CPF = "chance pour la France". The phrase was coined by someone in Chirac's administration to refer to the great good fortune that immigration represented for France. It is constantly used ironically by the bloggers.

The downtown areas will be freed, no radical chic young whites wearing hoods will be mingling with the jihadists, and everything will be done to restore a healthy political scene in anticipation of a ministerial shake-up oriented clearly towards the Right.

But Herr Satz isn't sure of his own speculations:

However, I wouldn't bet on this scenario, because right now there's only a 50-50 chance for it to come true. For one thing, Sarko does not have the "cojones" to pull off a stunt like this, but on the other hand, his popularity rating went up sharply after the riots of 2005, and provoking new ones could help him regain some lost ground.

It's hard to know what will happen, but in two days we will be set.

Note: La Toussaint (All Saints' Day) vacation begins on Saturday October 23 and ends on Thursday November 4. So this weekend we will know if what he says has any merit. The radio has been announcing all day (Thursday and Friday) that riots are going on still in Lyons and other cities.

Below, a confrontation between police and white French students.


Turning to another website, Lyon Capitale, an article dated October 19 gives many details of what actually happened in Lyons, plus it provides several photos that prove that this was urban violence of great magnitude:

Between 18,000 and 45,000 persons headed for Place Bellecour on Tuesday october 20, where the youth confronted the riot police. Six cars were burned and 21 others turned upside down. Nine stores were pillaged. Seventy-four persons were arrested by the police.

Note: Discrepancies in the figures are normal - the organizers inflate the numbers, the police always give smaller figures.

The article then gives a blow-by-blow account of the happenings of the day, in reverse chronological order.

The demonstrators against retirement reform were of two types: the adult members of the labor unions and the high-school students who must have been incited to join in. In addition there were the "casseurs" - the vandals from the ghettos who are always ready to destroy property and fill their pockets with stolen cell phones, wallets, camcorders, jewelry, etc...

Incidents and destruction of property took place all morning. The riot police used tear gas in large quantity. Almost 1000 young persons - mainly high-schoolers, confronted the police. (From reading this account, it seems that the face-to-face encounters were between police and high-school students, not between police and immigrants.)

The police estimated that there were 18,000 anti-reform demonstrators, including 4000 high-school and university students.

At 1:25, the vice president of the Regional Council took the microphone from the CGT labor union. He asked the demonstrators not to give in "to the provocations that are coming from all directions". He exhorted the union members to place themselves between the high-schoolers and the police. "Of course, there are stones thrown, but by responding with tear gas, the riot police agitate everybody. It's provocation," affirmed a delegate of the CGT.

At 6:20 the Communist deputy from the department of the Rhône, André Gerin, strongly condemned "the criminal acts" that had been committed in Lyons all during the day:

"Vandals, thugs, gangs, organize criminal acts. They destroy, they burn for no reason but to discredit, ruin and break the popularity of peaceful demonstrations. They want to turn public opinion around. It's a windfall for the government."

Note: An interesting comment, because it implies that Sarkozy has everything to gain from the violence. The unions are discredited, and he will have his reforms. But this means that the real criminal is Sarkozy who benefits from this mass destruction. The high-schoolers will soon forget all this, and the vandals "recruited" from the ghettos will get a lot of freebies.

Or is that just too cynical? Note that André Gerin, though a Communist, has been outspoken against the burka, and on other similar issues seems to have a streak of patriotism in him.

By 7:50 in the evening there had been 75 arrests in Lyons. The prefect of the Rhône, Jacques Gérault, reacted vigorously: "For the first time, we have had to deal with the violent actions of almost 1300 vandals. Twenty-one cars were overturned, eight businesses damaged, nine stores pillaged. One hundred seventy persons were arrested since last Thursday (October 14) including 74 today (one third of these were known to the police). They are thugs from the suburbs who take advantage of the situation."

Jacques Gérault also launched an appeal to parents "that the young people do not allow themselves to be snatched up by a movement that can manipulate them."

Note: Which "young people" is he referring to? The white students, I should think...

The director of public safety for the department, Albert Doutre, said that "another limit had been crossed. We had to deal with behavior that was like urban guerilla warfare. The destruction in the streets was systematic.We had to use the GIPN," he added.


Note: The GIPN are special police forces ready to intervene if necessary 24/7.

For a slide show, click here.

Here is one comment from a Lyon Capitale reader who was there:

I was witness to a great many of these scenes, since I was a demonstrator. I can already say one thing: the persons I saw being arrested were certainly not vandals. And you can see it on the videos. They were just high school students. The riot police charged at everybody, except the vandals. It's scandalous. It was all the fault of the police. They guided the vandals, I'm sorry but that's my feeling.

Yesterday evening about 8:00 p.m. I walked through Lyons, towards Carnot, Bellecour and Hotel de Ville. The city was little by little dressing its wounds.

I saw many things, things I had never seen before with my own eyes, I'm overwhelmed, shocked by the attitude of the riot police, etc... I think, as do many others, that the whole thing was set up, that the vandals were guided. Why? To frighten the population and the demonstrators. But the population is not getting over its anger, and this violence will engender another. For strategic purposes...

Thanks to the government, thanks to the media, for having brought a bazar to France. Thanks to those manipulated, thanks to all. The ancients used to say: it will end badly for some...

Note: "Bazar" refers to a souk. It can also mean chaos.

The New York Times has a lengthy article that describes the event as a major confrontation between the government and the unions, in which the high-school students are performing the requisite rite of passage that street demonstrations offer. The article has very little to say about violence by immigrants.

Below, destroying cars:


Below, a photo from the NYT:



As I post, I saw this short item in Lyon Capitale, dated October 22, announcing that he police have arrested at least 35 members of the "extreme-right". As before, when they arrested the students, they seem to be acting under orders to arrest certain people, and not others. But more clarification of this is needed:

A police van for 35 people was taken to Ampère. As with the students yesterday, the activists ("militants") of the extreme-right have been sent to the police headquarters. The police commissioner in charge of operations explained to our reporter that he had already checked this group of "140 individuals" at Quai Rambaud, at 3:00 p.m. "If I have to check you a second time, I'll take you into custody for the crime of assembling", he warned them. A warning was not enough, and the police blocked 125 activists at place Ampère. A second van has just arrived and a third one is on its way. About twenty activists are still wandering about in the neighborhood, escaping from the police.

Note the tone of the last sentence: as if the greatest danger were a few right-wingers wandering about.

On a similar note, the police arrested eight persons said to belong to "an anarchist movement". They had been carrying iron bars.