On the fifth night of social unrest in France, the early hours between Sunday and Monday were calmer throughout France. Heightened security prevented further looting and arson although the wave of cholera continues.
So far, 5,000 vehicles and 190,1 garbage cans have been burned, 000,250 public buildings degraded or burned, 700 attacks on police stations and gendarmeries and <> police officers injured in the riots.
At least 3,200 people who took part in the unrest were arrested between Tuesday and Sunday night. 60 percent of them have no judicial record. The average of the detainees is 17 years old, with others between 12 and 13 years old, who have attacked the forces of order.
Tribute of the mayors
Mayors from all over France gathered in front of their buildings, many targeted for burning by the revealed. A tribute to the aggression suffered by the Republican mayor Vincent Jeanbrun of L'Hay les Roses, in Val de Marne, whose house was burned after being hit by a car that broke the doors. His wife was injured, broke her tibia and is hospitalized with morphine. Her two young children are traumatized.
The home of Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun after Sunday's attack. Photo: Reuters
The social outbreak affects quiet communes, although the mayor had been questioned in Hay Les Roses. Their mayor's office had been surrounded by barbed wire to prevent looting and they went to their house, which they brutally burned.
There are les Roses
Today in Hay Les Roses, a southern suburb of Paris, the stained glass windows are covered by wood. The elderly continue to be locked up in their homes. Bank banknote dealers look burned and destroyed. Real estate, such as Century 21, vandalized; And the bakeries are with their armored glass kicked apart.
The inhabitants prefer to speak anonymously or choose not to pronounce themselves "Who is going to pay for this destruction?" asks the baker of Hay Les Roses. "We," is answered.
Others are afraid of reprisals and prefer not to speak or identify themselves. Fear runs through the village." They can come back," says a lady, who travels with her puppy that desolation.
The attacked house of the mayor. Photo: Nassim Gomri / AFP
They have destroyed the mail. Now the population must go to Chevilly, the neighboring town, to look for correspondence. "But how will the elderly, who almost do not leave the house?" questions the postman, desolate in front of his destroyed work.
A tow truck takes away the car, burned in the mayor's house. A patrol car guards the street.
Solidarity and dialogue
Mayors are the closest political figure to the neighbors in France. They represent "a republic or an authority," where the rebels no longer recognize or accept each other.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo showed her affection and solidarity with Vincent Jeanbrun and "my solidarity in the face of acts that are unacceptable, unspeakable."
"But I want to say to the French elect that we spend many nights trying to repair, to understand, to anticipate and to achieve calm in our neighborhoods. I want to tell law enforcement my support for their work but also tell them that we live in a state of law," he said.
March in solidarity with mayors whose municipalities have been vandalized. Photo: Reuters
The mothers of Aulnay sous Bois took to the streets, with handwritten signs, to call their neighborhood, on the way to Charles de Gaulle airport, their children and other parents to "stop violence and looting."
Arab mothers, black Africans in their typical and West Indian clothes gathered in the streets to shout "Justice to the victims, Stop the looting", and call for it on handwritten cardboard posters.
This is his response to President Emmanuel Macron's call to "take responsibility for your children." Most of the participants in the riots are between 14 and 25 years old but 12-year-old boys have been found involved.
Macron demanded the massive maintenance of police forces on the ground. At least 45,000 exhausted police officers are deployed across France to ensure a "return to calm."
Macron with the affected mayors
The head of state will receive on Tuesday the 220 mayors affected in the riots at the Elysee Palace. They will demand that he resurrect Jean Louis Borloo's plan for the suburbs, which he hid in his drawer.
But Patrick Jarry, mayor of Nanterre, the town where the young Nahel was executed, which unleashed the explosion, recalled that "we must not lose the starting point of the situation and the demand for justice that must continue to exist."
The town hall of Hay-les-Roses, surrounded by wires. Photo: Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP
"We continue to reflect and carry forward the demands we have on how to find more egalitarian and fairer policies. These will be the issues that will have to be discussed, when the tension goes down and they agree to talk," he reflected.
The Medef, which brings together the captains of industry, is concerned "about the economic and social consequences" of the violence, despite the government's measures to support the affected companies.
Merchants demand "a state compensation fund" when shopping malls and shops have been looted, destroyed or burned.
Paris has stained glass windows covered with wood to protect against looting. In the midst of liquidation seasons, people try not to reach urban areas, where there can be riots and when the curfew for transport continues between Paris and the Ile de France.
A controversial collection
France is divided in the face of social explosion and its scandalized middle classes. 96.5 percent believe that "sanctions against parents of juvenile offenders should be strengthened" and 4.4 percent do not, according to a poll by the conservative daily Le Figaro,
A collection in favor of the policeman who executed Nahel and another for the mother of the dead teenager shows the crack that generates the debate. Fundraising for the family of Florian, the French policeman who shot dead a teenager and is imprisoned for voluntary manslaughter, has already reached 900,000 euros. Much more than a similar campaign for the victim's relatives.
The largest fund, set up by Jean Messiha, an independent far-right populist, has raised €860,000 from just 40,000 donors. Another, led by the policeman's colleagues, has raised more than 50,000 euros.
Around 150,000 euros were pledged to the family of Nahel Merzouk, a Frenchman of Kabyle origin, who was shot dead in his car, at point-blank range, on Tuesday last week, in a murder that sparked six nights of unrest in France.
The 38-year-old police officer, married with one child, was charged with murder and is in pretrial detention. He claims that he had the right to fire his weapon to protect his life, that of a fellow officer and that of other road users. Video of the shooting appears to show there was no immediate danger to them. This was the prosecutors' first ruling.
Authorize or override?
Nahel's grandmother, Nadia, said she was heartbroken by the donations. "It took my grandson's life. This man must pay, the same as everyone else," he told BFMTV.
Eric Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, said the fundraising was "fueling the fire" of the unrest. He described Messiha's background as a populist "instrumentalization" of Nahel's death.
Olivier Faure, first secretary of the opposition Socialist Party, said funding for the police officer was "perpetuating a huge division" in French society and called for its closure.
Paris, correspondent
ap
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