Riots spark fear across Europe
2005-11-10 16:00
Rome - The riots spreading across France have exposed the anger, disillusionment and racial tensions simmering in Paris' poor, immigrant neighbourhoods.
Europeans said on Monday they were bracing for copycat violence in impoverished quarters of their own big cities.
Cars were set ablaze outside Brussels' main train station and in a working-class district of Berlin - but officials in Belgium and Germany sought on Monday to play down the risk of the kind of violence that France has experienced since October 27.
Britain saw rioting last month in the central England city of Birmingham, sparked by racial tension between members of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old black girl by an Asian man.
Across the continent, officials acknowledged that poverty and the poor integration of Europe's growing immigrant populations may be feeding disillusionment in the cities' poorer quarters.
Leaders to look at policies
European leaders said it was time to look closely at immigration and integration policies.
"There are terrible living conditions and unhappiness - (even) where everybody is Italian," said Romano Prodi, the center-left's candidate to oppose Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi in elections next spring. Poverty, unemployment and urban decay could spark violence in Italy as well, he said.
Foreign minister Gianfranco Fini, a key Berlusconi ally, shot back that Prodi's remarks caused unnecessary alarm.
And Wolfgang Schaeuble, a conservative tapped as Chancellor-designate Angela Merkel's interior minister, told the Bild daily newspaper that Germany cannot be compared to France and its sprawling, decrepit housing projects.
Aiming to improve integration
Schaeuble cautioned that "we have to improve integration, particularly of young people. That means above all that they must master the German language."
An immigration law that took effect in January aims to integrate newcomers to Germany, making German-language and civics courses obligatory for them.
Others, however, saw the rioting in low-income Paris suburbs as evidence that European immigration policies don't work.
Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of Austria's rightist, xenophobic Freedom Party, called on Austrian leaders to stop immigration and implement integration measures that would prevent "French conditions" from emerging in his country.
Domenico De Masi, a sociologist at Rome's La Sapienza university, said growing income differences make it likely that violence will reach Italian cities as well.
Fearing similar riots
Russian Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov said on Monday that Russia - coping with its own rising racial tension - could see similar rioting.
"I am convinced that something like what we are now seeing in France could happen here, but on an even greater scale and with even more dramatic consequences," Zyuganov said, according to Interfax.
"When the makeup of the population changes so fundamentally during a short period of time, its new members cannot adapt overnight."
The Swedish tabloid Expressen said in an editorial that the trouble in Paris is of an "all-European relevance."
The French unrest began after the deaths of two teenagers of North African descent. They were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power station, apparently thinking they were being chased.
Tolerance vital for peace
Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan said France had ignored Ankara's calls for more tolerance, citing France's ban on head scarves in public schools.
"We've always told our friends in Europe that they should not lead to a clash of civilisations in order to prevent such incidents," daily Hurriyet quoted Erdogan as saying on Sunday.
"We should work for an alliance between civilisations. There is a great duty which falls on the Christian and Muslim world. Europe should have evaluated this," Erdogan said. "We said it. But France did not take it into account. It did not listen to us."
Abdelkarim Carrasco, a leader of Spain's estimated one million-member Muslim community, said he does not envision the same kind of violence in his country because the proportion of poor North African Muslims is much smaller.
But he said the French experience posed a key test for all of Europe.
"Either Europe develops and supports the idea of a mixed culture, or Europe has no future," he said. "Europe has to learn from what the United States has done: It is a country that has taken in people from all over the world."
- AP