VILLIERS-LE-BEL, FRANCE — They burned the library overnight during a riot in this gritty suburb outside Paris. The blackened shelves and books were thrown around like garbage the next morning, and singed desks were piled on top of one another like old firewood.
As they examined the wreckage Tuesday -- the senator, the sports coach and the teenagers with sticks and pipes still walking around in the light of day -- all had similar explanations. Why the arson up and down the commercial streets? Why the attack on a preschool and the area's only train station? The deaths of two teenagers after their motorbike collided Sunday with a police car had ignited a melee.
But why two nights of unparalleled violence against police by disaffected youth?
"It's a way of making people understand we've had enough," says Charlie Koissi, the 31-year-old coach who seems to know every kid who passes by and gives each one a high-five. "When you touch one of our brothers, no matter what [his] origin, it concerns us."
Raymonde Le Texier, the senator who represents the area in Parliament and has lived here 40 years, describes pent-up rage by black and Muslim children of immigrants who feel lost and abandoned in the projects.
"People feel forgotten by those in power," says Le Texier, a member of the Socialist Party. "It's the truth -- they have been forgotten."
As for the kids, they speak without words. They throw rocks at outsiders and stare angrily at officials such as Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who breezes quickly past the burned-out library and later calls the rioters "criminals." Journalists with their relentless questions are circling around the kids, who half want to be heard and half want to fight them. No, they aren't talking today, and they shout down their "brothers" who try to speak.
By midnight the area had mostly calmed down, but bands of young people set more cars on fire and 22 youths were taken into custody, the regional government said. Unrest flared briefly in the city of Toulouse, in southern France, where 10 cars and another library were torched by roving posses of disaffected youth.
A world apart
Theirs is a world apart, with its own codes and subculture. When France was paralyzed for most of November by widespread strikes, the young in these poor neighborhoods remained calm, quietly enduring the chaos like everybody else. But then two of their own, identified as Moushin, 15, and Larimi, 16, lay dead on the street. They immediately blamed the cops. Cars were set on fire, and blurry photographs of the teenagers with "We Love You" written on them were taped on storefronts and street signs. This time around, the violence came faster and more furiously than in 2005.
