Saturday - January 02, 2010

Slackers

Youths burned 1,137 cars across France overnight as New Year’s Eve celebrations once again turned violent, the French Interior Ministry said on Friday.

Car burnings are regular occurrences in poor suburbs that ring France’s big cities, but the arson is especially prevalent during New Year’s Eve revelry.

The number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned this time last year, even though the Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night—10,000 more than 12 months ago.

It said police detained 549 people overnight, compared with 288 in 2009 New Year celebrations. However, unlike in previous years, there were no direct clashes between police and youths. “The few disturbances that did take place were brought swiftly under control,” the ministry said in a statement.

For much of the world, they became iconic of France’s worst social ills: the burned-out carcasses of thousands of cars set ablaze during nearly three weeks of nationwide rioting in 2005. But as yet another orgy of automobile arson on Wednesday demonstrated, the torching of cars in France has not only become an everyday event; it’s also now a regular form of expression for disenfranchised suburban youths wanting to make sure the rest of the country doesn’t forget they exist. And their fiery presence is never felt so strongly as it is each New Year’s Eve — the day of France’s unofficial festival of car-burning.

In a country where car-burning isn’t a common symptom of socioeconomic unrest, news of so many automobiles being torched would be alarming — if not a sign of brewing insurrection. In France, however, word of the destruction that accompanied the evening the French call Saint-Sylvestre was met with a mix of Gaulic shrugs and low-grade peevishness.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/02/2010 at 09:26 PM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons • News-Briefs •  
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