2005 Riots, a look back over Clichy-sous-Bois
10 years after the 2005 riots in the suburbs of Paris, dramatic economic and social disparities persist between the neighborhoods where the riots started and the rest of Paris region
On October 27th 2005, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore died electrocuted in an electric transformer of Clichy-sous-Bois. They were 17 and 15 years old.
Their friends, with whom they were just before their death, said they were chased by the police. They were all on their way back home when the police was called for a suspicion of robbery in a construction site. The teenagers, suspected, ran away.
Three of them, Zyed, Bouna and Muhittin, entered a national electricity company (EDF) transformer. They hid there for more than thirty minutes, before a bad move created an electric arc between Bouna and Zyed which killed them. Their friend Muhittin is severely burnt but manages to get out and give the alert.
Outside, the policemen are already back to their office, after arresting the other teenagers who tried to escape. They know that three people are still hiding. When they were on ground, one of the policemen said in his service radio : "if they enter the EDF site, they don't stand much chance". Yet, no one warns the EDF company to ask to stop the power in the transformer.
In the evening, more than 200 people face the policemen in the streets, accusing them to have caused the death of the two teenagers.
This is the first night of riots. They wil last three weeks and spread to more than 270 cities.
Follow how the events unfolded hour by hour on our Twitter account : @2005_Riots
The clashes erupted suddenly, and then swelled into three weeks of riots that spread across the country. What anarchical sentiment was lying dormant to have caused such a violent and prolonged response to the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré?
There was no one element that took the blame – rather the riots are thought to have been caused by a variety of underlying structural, societal factors. The first of these is geography andinfrastructure. Benna and Traoré grew up in suburban "cités": housing projects clinging to the outskirts of Paris, but very disconnected from the city itself. These clusters of high-rise buildings were built in the ‘60s and ‘70s to respond to France’s housing crisis. They were cheap and suitable for workers – until those workers started to earn enough money and were able to leave the bleak settlements. Those who remained were those who were unable to leave for social and economic reason, creating zones of social lack characterised by under-perfomance at school, unemployment and petty crime. This general malaise then became socialised because politicians did not address it. It was part and parcel of life in these banlieues, and developed into an identity for the people growing up in these areas.
This concentration effect of social disadvantage is compounded by the infrastructure of Ile-de-France. In 2005, the suburban areas around Paris had poor internal and connecting infrastructure. Metro lines do not run right into the centre of towns, forcing citizens to take several different types of transport just to get into Paris. The inhabitants of the cités in the north-east of Paris were particularly physically and socially segregated.
At the time, France had a reputation as a welcoming country for refugees and economic immigrants, touting its Republican model of integration as a success story. And yet the multicultural model of ‘one rule for everyone’, combined with economic factors, served only to drive newly-arrived ethnic minorities to the housing estates outside the city, thus creating even further isolation. This is the culture in which Benna and Traoré grew up.
Standard military conscription stopped in the 1990s, which was a common source of employment for young people from the estates. This, on top of the economic slowdown in the same decade, meant that less work was available. Unemployment rose, and, significantly, so did boredom. The urban jungle of the estates was made up of grey, concrete brutalist architecture. By the millennium, it was dilapidated. There was no refurbishment or new construction. There was nothing to do.
Politically, the banlieue had essentially been ignored. Politicians visited the cités to drum up support for campaigns, and then never returned. Le Monde recently interviewed a young mother who was living in Clichy-sous-Bois during the riots. She described the complete absence of psychological support for school children in the area who witnessed so much violence. “We’re worth nothing in this area,” she says. “We are only here for the elections.”
Police presence in the area was typically only associated with racial profiling and violence, which provides the explanation for why the three teenagers were more inclined to run from the police. The police were not there to solve and address petty crime and protect the inhabitants of the cités, but to punish the perpetrators. It was all bad cop with no good. One protester told the Associated Press at the time, "People are joining together to say we’ve had enough. We live in ghettos. Everyone lives in fear."
The most inflammatory factor at the time was possibly the immediate political response to the rioting. Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Minister of the Interior, immediately denounced the rioters, calling them “scum” and saying that the neighbourhoods should be “cleaned with a power hose”. Citizens of the banlieue are enraged further when police respond to riots with tear gas and a canister explodes inside a mosque, a symbol for many of out-and-out racial and religious hatred and disrespect. That was when the riots began to spread out of control.
The riots sparked ultimately because of the cumulative effect of all of these factors. Harsher policing and conservative political reforms introduced by Sarkozy then had the effect of
deepening existing social chasms. And ten years on, a structural change is yet to come.
What has changed in the 10 years since the riots in Clichy-sous-Bois? At the national level, animosity continued to mount between the cités and politicians during and after the 2005 riots. Minister of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy was called a « pyromaniac fireman »—stoking the fire of conflict with the suburbs and at the same time promising to restore security through stricter policing and penal measures. Sarkozy joined a number of prominent conservatives in spreading the idea that the cause of the 2005 riots was polygamy—big families with multiple wives were letting their teenagers wreak havoc in the streets. Once the national “state of emergency” was in place, Sarkozy pushed for any non-French citizens who participated in the riots to be deported, whether they were living in France legally or not. Never mind that the vast majority of rioters were French.
Sarkozy’s antics paid off. In 2007, he won the presidency with 53% of the vote. Under Sarkozy, the government continued to push hardline stances on security and rule of law. Stricter law enforcement trumped engaging with communities—reportedly telling police, “You are not social workers” —and a new emphasis on controlling immigration took precedent over integration and inclusion. The “no future” problem of disadvantaged French suburbs seemed to be getting worse: in education, for example, the achievement gap grew substantially between poor and middle-class students during this period, according to a 2012 OECD report.
As for Clichy-sous-Bois, after the 2005 riots the town was synonymous with France’s neglected suburbs. Impoverished, dilapidated, isolated, and seething with resentment— the cités of Clichy-sous-Bois loom large in the public imagination. Clichy-sous-Bois’s social problems were now compounded with a seemingly ineffaceable stigma. Urgent and dramatic actions were needed in order for conditions to improve. Unfortunately, the policy response to the 2005 riots has favored scale over urgency, with big promises that are slow to deliver.
Tensions between police and local youth remain high. Periodic queries by French media are met with a more-or-less uniform response from residents: Police have no respect for us. Police look down on us. They aren’t here to help us; they’re here to punish us. One of François Hollande’s campaign promises 2012 was to strip police of the right to “stop and frisk” without sufficient cause, but as President he has yet to follow through—even though a French high court recently found the practice was being used to harass ethnic minorities.
43.4% of residents live below the poverty line.
Despite an unemployment level over 23 percent—which has barely budged since 2005—the government did not open an unemployment bureau in Clichy-sous-Bois until 9 years after the riots. For decades, residents had had to go to a neighboring city to access job placement services and apply for unemployment benefits.
Incomes in the whole of Clichy-sous-Bois have converged slightly with those in central Paris in recent years—the median monthly income per capita is about 300 euro higher than it was in 2005—but much like the urban renovation effort, this trend has yet to reach the cités. Chêne-Pointu, for example, has actually seen it’s median individual incomes fall by 95 euro between 2005 and the last census in 2012. 43.4% of residents in Clichy-sous-Bois live below the poverty line.
The city is progressively implementing an unprecedented 620 million-euro renovation plan with budgetary support from the national government. The plan includes renovation and reconstruction of hundreds of buildings, including apartments, schools, nurseries, and a public pool. Several of the run-down towers in Haut-Clichy have been replaced by a rows of small cottages painted in cheerful colors. However, the renovation effort centers on Haut-Clichy and has yet to touch the poorest neighborhoods of Clichy-sous-Bois. Residents report that the Chêne-Pointu estate—where Zyed and Bouna lived and where the riots began—is in worse shape then ever. After a 2012 fire in an elevator shaft, for example, one of the high-rises at Chêne-Pointu was without an elevator for two years.
The physical isolation of Clichy-sous-Bois is seen as the biggest impediment to fixing the town’s problems, and has been the hardest to change. Plans to install a tramway between Clichy-sous-Bois and the RER train stations of two neighboring suburbs have been delayed three times. Originally slated to start running in 2015, the tram service is now scheduled to begin in 2019. In the meantime, residents must continue to take a bus to a neighboring town in order to connect with the train to central Paris.
Clichy-sous-Bois’s mayor, Olivier Klein, frequently emphasizes the renovation effort, saying that conditions are improving in the town. But when construction of the tram was pushed back last year, he told Le Monde, “What good will it serve to renovate if no one can get in or out?”
In May 2015, almost a decade after the deaths of Zyed and Bouna, the two policemen involved were cleared of all charges in a trial for negligence. Many of the structural factors that influenced the 2005 riots have yet to change for Clichy-sous-Bois, but it does seem that the town has come to regard the tragic incident with Zyed and Bouna with sadness and remembrance more than anger. The 10 year anniversary of the riots was not marked by violent demonstrations, but by a solemn vigil at the memorial by the boy’s former school.
10 years after : a look back at Clichy-sous-Bois
10 years after the 2005 riots in the suburbs, dramatic economic and social disparities persist between the neighborhoods where the riots took place and the city center.
Why did the riots happen?
2005-2015 : which policies for Clichy-sous-Bois ?
Jobless suburbs
Income disparities
Transports : Work in Progress
10 years after, a picture of Clichy-sous-Bois
Several factors have led to the riots in 2005, and several "banlieues" policies have been implemented since, as well as employment plans and economic help.
Has it had any impact on life in Clichy-sous-Bois ?
You can click on the buttons below to discover it.
If you live in Clichy-Sous-Bois, tell us via our Twitter account : @2005_Riots
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