French politicians fear youth violence along Greek pattern
By Celestine Bohlen Bloomberg News
Published: December 19, 2008
PARIS: Firebombs and breaking glass, tear gas
and burning cars. The images from Greece this
month were enough to put the fear of youth into
the hearts of European leaders.
That dread was palpable in France when President
Nicolas Sarkozy abruptly delayed for one year a
plan to overhaul France's high schools, after
students from Bordeaux to Brittany took to the
streets in protest.
Those demonstrations haven't turned violent yet.
But French history, and the example of Greece,
suggests they might. At least that is what
people like Laurent Fabius, a Socialist Party
leader, are saying on French radio.
"What we see in Greece is not out of the realm
of possibility in France," Fabius said on Europe
1. "When you have such an economic depression,
such social despair, all it takes is a match."
An editorial in the daily newspaper Libération
said the decision to delay the education law -
which would change schedules and academic
requirements for the last three years of lycée,
or high school - was purely defensive. "One
senses among the team in power a hesitation, a
dread of riots, a fear of explosion," wrote
Didier Pourquery.
The rapid rise in unemployment among people
under age 25, particularly in southern Europe,
is one concern. In Spain, for instance, youth
unemployment shot up from 18.4 percent in August
2007 to 28.1 percent in October 2008. The
average jobless rate for young people in Italy,
Greece and France is well above the average for
the European Union, according to Eurostat, the
Luxembourg agency that collects EU statistics.
"All these events have at their core a sense
among youth that their lives are not going
anywhere, and they have nothing to lose," said
Ken Dubin, a visiting associate professor at
University Carlos III in Madrid.
But economics alone doesn't explain the
restlessness in universities and high schools.
Students, after all, have no jobs to lose.
Experts speak of another worry, which is the
seemingly anachronistic resurgence of vague
radical movements, loosely called anarchist,
which hark back to the destructive ideology of
Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian
revolutionary, and to the rebellious rhetoric of
the 1960s and 1970s.
Some of it isn't that threatening, like
recurring play of the 1979 song, "Another Brick
in the Wall," by Pink Floyd, on Alpha radio
during the week-long protests in Athens. "We
don't need no education / We don't need no
thought control / No dark sarcasm in the
classroom," goes the angry refrain.
But the violence wasn't far behind the slogans.
By the third day of rioting, the estimated
damage in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece's two
biggest cities, was more than E1 billion, or $1.4
billion.
The riots in Greece began as spontaneous
protests to the killing of a 15-year-old student
by the police in Athens on Dec. 6, after a group
of youths stoned a police car. It spread to
university centers around the country, quickly
morphing into a wider contest between young
people and the police and by extension, the
government. Tens of thousands of people
continued the protests on Thursday.
Greece has a history of violent demonstrations
that dates from the colonels' junta in the
1970s. The National Technical University in
Athens, known as the Polytechnic, has been off-
limits to police in homage to the events of Nov.
17, 1973, when the government sent a tank
crashing though the university gates, igniting a
popular uprising.
Now the Polytechnic is again occupied by
protesters, who have built barricades from
broken marble and paving stones, and stockpiled
Molotov cocktails and other weapons.
The role of these so-called anarchists in the
weeklong protests is still not clear. But their
message - loaded with anti-capitalist, anti-
government and anti-globalization themes - is
unmistakable. Also clear is their bent for
violence.
"What they provide is a template that others
with less ideological commitment can use," said
Stathis Kalyvas, a political science professor
at Yale University. "If you have a demonstration
where 10 of them start throwing stones, soon the
500 others following them will join in."
France isn't the only country nervously watching
the events in Greece. Students in Italy and
Spain have also staged protests against proposed
changes to schools and universities recently. In
Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, they took over
administration offices this month in opposition
to changes mandated by the EU that would link
higher education to marketable job skills.
In Italy, hundreds of thousands of angry
teachers, students and parents mobbed Rome on
Oct. 30 to protest an overhaul of the education
system, in what was described as the largest
student demonstration since 1968.
Each country brings its own issues, and history,
to these demonstrations; like Greece, France has
a tradition of street protests turning ugly.
In October 2005, youths in the suburban and
largely Muslim ghettoes of Paris went on a
rampage, causing E160 million in damage, after
two teenagers were killed as they were being
chased by police. In 2006, university students
staged demonstrations that dissipated into
random violence, as hundreds of thousands
protested a proposed law that would create
flexible work contracts for young people. The
government eventually withdrew the legislation.
This year's "lycée" protests also carried hints
of escalating violence. A high school
principals' association in the Bouches-du-Rhô
region warned on Dec. 5 of "an unheard-of
aggression and near-impossibility of dialogue"
with protesting students. Philippe Guittet, head
of the association, told the newspaper Le Monde
that he suspected the protests were propelled by
"militant forces" working behind the scenes.
France chose to defuse the situation by
withdrawing the contested schools legislation.
In Greece, the government, eager to restore
calm, has decided for now to cede the
Polytechnic to the protestors.
That might buy peace for now, but it won't
necessarily soothe the anger.
http://www.iht.
Monday, 22 December 2008
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