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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:44 pm
The first death resulting from French rioting:
A man beaten up during violence in a riot-hit suburb north of Paris died of his injuries yesterday.
Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, who was attacked on Friday evening and had been in a coma since then, was the first person to die as a result of the riots that began on October 27.
He was attacked as he talked with a neighbour in a public housing estate in the tough suburb of Stains.
His widow, speaking after meeting Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, said of the aggressor: “I want these people punished.”
So far, according to Reuters:
* 77 police and 31 fire fighters have been injured;
* 1,200 insurgents have been arrested;
* 20 insurgents have been convicted (heaviest sentence: one year);
* And 4,700 cars have been incinerated.
UPDATE. Rioters go postal. And churchal, and warehousal, and filmal:
Even the small village of Villedieu-du-Temple, 12km from the southern town of Montauban, saw six postal vehicles destroyed.
Among the targets of the rioters were churches, nursery and primary schools, town-halls and police stations as well as warehouses, car dealerships and a film-studio at Asnieres outside Paris. In the Normandy city of Rouen rioters used a car as a battering ram against a police station.
UPDATE II. Five cars torched in Brussels; another five burned in Berlin.
UPDATE III. Tony Parkinson:
The French Government has reacted too slowly, both to the social and political challenges and, in these past days, to the violence.
For years, the French have accused American racism of provoking riots in the US in the 1960s, as well as the more recent LA riots after the beating of Rodney King. Now, it is French policies on race and religion that invite scrutiny.
A hands-off policing strategy in inner-city estates has emboldened Muslim radicals. They run the neighbourhoods. They intimidate the locals. They enforce their own version of sharia. They have become a law unto themselves.
UPDATE IV. French suburban insurgents are culturally American:
They wear hoods, baggy jeans and brand-name sneakers and their heroes are American rappers such as 50 Cent. They describe their antagonists as “white”, hate the police and when they are fighting they say they’re “dancing with wolves”.
UPDATE V. Victorian politics has turned Parisian:
Police were called to internal ALP elections in the western suburbs after the alleged assault in the federal seat of Gorton about 10am and a brawl involving up to 20 people in the neighbouring federal electorate of Maribyrnong about 4pm.
