French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, visiting Corsica where rioting has followed the serious assault in a mainland jail of a nationalist figure by a fellow prisoner, has said that Emmanuel Macron, if re-elected in presidential elections next month, could offer autonomy to the Mediterranean island which has been under rule from Paris since the 18th century.
France has sent police reinforcements, including elite units, to its Caribbean island La Guadeloupe after a week of riots escalated this weekend, amid protests against the introduction of restrictions on movement to counter the coronavirus epidemic, and to a background of long-simmering social unrest.
French nationals have been advised to leave Pakistan due to violent demonstrations after the arrest of the leader of a hardline political party calling for France's ambassador to be expelled over his government's defence of the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Hundreds of fairground workers in Le Mans in north-west France, , some carrying baseball bats and shields, mounted a violent attack on the mayor's offices on Monday after he banned their business from operating in the town centre.
There were scenes of fighting and chaos in a number of stores of the Intermarché retail chain around France on Thursday as crowds of shoppers, some described as behaving 'like animals', grabbed jars of the popular chocolate hazelnut spread Nutella being offered at knock-down prices.
Cars were torched and public buildings attacked in a second night of violence in Paris suburb after 24-year-old died during transportation to gendarmerie station.
On October 27th, 2005, two police officers chased three teenagers into an electricity sub-station in a Parisian suburb where two of them died after being electrocuted. Their deaths provoked major riots around Paris and across France. Nearly eight years later a French court has ruled that the two officers should stand trial, on charges of failing to provide assistance to persons in danger. Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan reports on the complex background to this high-profile case.
The Paris suburb of Le Blanc-Mesnil is typical of dozens of socially-deprived agglomerations that surround the capital’s northern perimeter, characterized by zones of high-rise public housing estates, higher than average unemployment, especially among the young, and a significant population of North and West African origin who complain of being stigmatized and discriminated against. While the stereotypes of those who live in what are commonly called les banlieues are reinforced by regular incidents of violence, drug dealing and social unrest, local inhabitants are rarely offered a public stage to challenge the narrow perceptions that ignore the broader realities of their community. But now, in a rare and insightful book published last month, a group of women residents of Le Blanc-Mesnil recount with frankness and simplicity their everyday experiences, both positive and negative, of life amid the troubled suburbs. Carine Fouteau reports.
