A Mayor Calls for the Army

The department of France best known to the world at large is no longer Finistère, in Brittany, or Savoie, in the Alps, or Vendée, with its special history, but the notorious Seine-Saint-Denis, number 93, northeast of Paris. Catapulted to fame in 2005 as rioting went on for weeks, an area of immigrant ghettos, crime, gangs with stockpiles of war weapons, drug dealing, murders, rapes, and general degradation, it has once again made headlines in France. This time, the town of Sevran has become a city under siege. This report, dated June 2, from Novopress summarizes:

In the June 2 edition of Le Parisien, an inquiry looks into the reports of "serious repeated incidents" in the city of Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis). More precisely, for several weeks, the pupils at the Montaigne School, in the heart of the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Montceleux, are often deprived of their recreation period. The reason? They have to stay away from gunshots fired nearby. The area is rotted away from drug trafficking by immigrant dealers of non-European origin.

Questioned by Carole Sterlé, journalist for Le Parisien, the mayor of the city, Stéphane Gatignon, sees only one possible solution to these crimes involving weapons of war: he wants help from the military, more than just a police helicopter crisscrossing the sky above Sevran.

"We must have forces of intervention, the blue berets, like those sent abroad to prevent warring parties from killing each other," demands the mayor.

For one year now, this has also been what the Bloc Identitaire has been demanding, through our campaign: "It is in our suburbs that they are needed. Let's demand the return of our soldiers from Afghanistan" (see poster at top). Stéphane Gatignon, a member of the Green Party for the moment, could find himself joining the identitarian political movement…

Note: A reminder that Novopress is the news service of the Bloc Identitaire.

An earlier report, dated May 17, spoke of the "umpteenth explosion of violence":

Monday night (May 16) around 10:30, two men, 26 and 38, were targeted by two unidentified persons on Jan-Palach Drive. Armed with handguns, the two assailants shot twice at the victims before escaping on a powerful motorbike. (…)

"More gun violence in Sevran. This recurrent problem is becoming more and more troublesome for the inhabitants of this city," declared a regional secretary of the police union UNSA.

The article closes with a mention of the use of weapons of war as well as semi-automatic pistols.

Another article dated March 21 reports that the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, Christian Lambert, was implementing greater security measures in the form of helicopters, motorcycle police, and increased identity checks in apartment lobbies.

A resident florist of Sevran spoke to Le Parisien. The article is dated June 14. He begins by giving the impression that the city is just fine, but as he speaks a different picture emerges:

"This is not representative of the city. Unless you know Sevran you might imagine that you need a bullet-proof vest. I have traveled, to Guadeloupe, for example, and when I say I live in Sevran, they say: "Isn't that too tough?" They think we are heros. That makes me angry. I deliver flowers everywhere, in all neighborhoods, and in other cities of Ile-de-France. And I see the same thing there as here - young people in apartment lobbies, drugs… I find that Sevran is even less degraded than the other cities. (…) Where will I be in ten years? Here! I have thought about leaving, but I did some market research that convinced me to stay. Sevran has intrinsic qualities that will prevent it from ever becoming Harlem: the countryside is twenty minutes from Paris, we are also ten minutes from Roissy, an enormous source of employment, and soon there will be Greater Paris."

Note: "Greater Paris" is Sarkozy's plan for enlarging the boundaries of the capital to include most of the suburbs and extending even as far as the Atlantic Ocean! Whether he, or his successor, goes through with this remains to be seen, but the first sketches show a futuristic, purely functional design devoid of beauty and individuality. The antithesis of Paris.

Below, a police guard in Sevran.