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France considers dusk-to-dawn curfew to check violence

Vaiju Naravane

The measure will allow police to carry out raids

Paris: As the worst urban violence France has known in over four decades continued to spread across the country with arson attacks against buses, schools, police stations and other symbols of state authority, the French Government led by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday adopted emergency measures including the possible imposition of dusk-to-dawn curfew wherever necessary.

The decision was taken at a meeting of Ministers chaired by President Jacques Chirac. The measure will also allow police to carry out raids to hunt down suspected weapon stockpiles in city suburbs at the centre of the unrest, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said after the Cabinet meeting.

"We will watch how events develop to see how it might be applied in a targeted way on an area of the country," the Minister said, stressing that it was a sign of the Government's "firmness, coolness and level-headedness." In the twelfth successive night of violence across France's underprivileged urban immigrant ghettos 1,173 vehicles were burnt and 330 persons arrested overnight.

Twelve police officers were lightly hurt, mainly by thrown projectiles. Some officers were the target for people firing buckshot, though none was hit. A dozen buildings were hit by arsonists.

More forces for deployment

Mr. De Villepin told national television late on Monday that the curfew powers would be invoked under a 50-year-old law first brought in as an unsuccessful attempt to quell an insurrection in Algeria, at a time when the north African country was a French colony.

He also said that 1,500 police and gendarme reservists would be deployed as reinforcements for 8,000 officers already on the ground, but ruled out any army intervention. He also announced a social and economic package to help these depressed suburbs including the restitution of neighbourhood police units and the re-allocation of funds to educational and social associations, which had both of these reduced in budget cuts introduced by the Government.

But the Opposition sharply criticised the Government's handling of the crisis, saying these measures were too little, too late. The Government's decision to invoke the 1955 law instituting a curfew was also decried by several Opposition politicians who said it awakened painful memories of the terrible repression against Algerians in the 50s and 60s. A large percentage of the population of the affected suburbs comes from north African Arab nations such as Algeria, Tunisia or Morrocco.

Mr. Chirac, who has so far failed to address the nation, making only a brief declaration outside the Elysee Palace, was also criticised for his continued silence.

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