Ethics Newsline®

PARIS
Violence tore through the Paris suburbs night after night last week and through the weekend, concentrated largely in impoverished towns with high populations of immigrant Africans and Muslims.

The Associated Press reported that the rioting is forcing France to come to grips with the “simmering anger of its suburbs, where immigrants and their French-born children live on the margins of society.”

Violence first erupted last week after the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who hid in an electrical substation to avoid a police identity check.

Since then, according to an analysis by the German broadcast network Deutsche Welle, the riots have become “a challenge to the authority of the government and a protest against the dismal economic prospects, rampant discrimination, and heavy-handed policing that the youth in the suburbs suffer.”

According to the Agence France-Presse and Reuters, the situation was charged from the beginning, with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy vowing to wage a “war without mercy” on the “rabble” who caused trouble in the impoverished suburbs.

Critics, including the opposition socialist party, have accused Sarkozy of inflaming the passions that sparked the disorders.

The riots took on a more sinister edge late last week as youths threw stones to prevent paramedics from reaching the injured, shot at police, and torched more than 1,400 cars. A man who was beaten into a coma on Friday died on Monday, becoming the riots’ first fatality.