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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
A campaign of terror is being waged against France’s immigrant population. In early August the interior minister, Charles Pasqua, ordered a police crackdown on terrorism. His pretext was the killing of five French embassy officials in Algeria and the need to fight the Algerian fundamentalist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
Since then well over 5,000 people in Paris alone have been subjected to random identity checks. There have been roadblocks in those areas of the capital where most North Africans live and even on the Champs Elysées. The police have grilled anyone with an ‘Arab’ look, handcuffing and hauling off suspects.
This vicious, racist witch hunt has had meagre results, always assuming its real purpose was to flush out the threat of ‘Islamic terrorism’. In total 22 fundamentalist ‘sympathisers’ have been interned.
Some of the suspects are unlikely terrorists. Ahmed Zitouni, a shopkeeper from near Calais, thought he was being arrested for drunk driving (an offence he had committed before) when the police turned up at his shop. Strict Muslims refuse to drink alcohol. His membership of the FIS is denied by those proud to belong to it. Many others interned in the concentration camp are simply devout, non-political followers of Islam.
The atmosphere of intimidation is reminiscent of what happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s during the Algerian war of independence, when the government launched a terror campaign against the North African community. Now the government is whipping up hysteria against the 800,000 Algerian community in France on the grounds that they are a fifth column for ‘Islamic terrorism’.
Charles Pasqua is no newcomer to racist politics. He is on the right of the right wing Gaullist party, the RPR, which currently heads the government. In 1986 he was also interior minister in the shortlived right wing ‘cohabitation’ government under the Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand. A bombing campaign gave him the excuse to crack down on immigrants. He had children arrested at gun point and held in police cells simply for answering back. Illegal immigrants were chained and led to deportation as if they were slaves. His police officers beat a student to death at a demonstration.
In 1988 Pasqua said he would cover up any police blunder. The cops took this as permission to shoot first and ask questions later. In the following weeks 14 people were killed. In the run up to the election (which the right lost) he made a naked bid to attract racist votes by stating that the Gaullists shared the values of Le Pen’s National Front.
The present government has been rocked by protest. Despite its crushing electoral victory last year it has had to backtrack on a number of issues, the most important of which have been the Air France strike over redundancies and the demonstrations against cutting the minimum wage for young workers. One important section of the political leadership is now clearly hoping to regain the initiative by playing the racist card.
Pasqua is key to this. In the last few months he has brought in laws which allow random identity checks, car searches and summary internment. These have been put to liberal use in the current crackdown. He is also planning to bring in surveillance measures with police video cameras on every street corner.
None of this has gone without protest from human rights organisations and the trade unions. Even sections of the government are worried about the consequences of Pasqua’s thuggery, if only for the reason that it puts him in position to succeed Mitterrand over other right wing contenders. There is also fear that the beneficiary will not be themselves but the National Front, whose influence has been muted during the last few months’ industrial protest.
In France working class anger was channelled to the left by the wave of strikes, demonstrations and protests earlier this year. The current Pasqua initiative shows, potentially at least, the danger of that anger being deflected into an anti-immigrant groove.
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