French police are struggling to contain a gang war in northeastern Paris that has left one dead and several injured, as local people complain they are being fenced into high-rise ghettos to make way for the middle class.
The 19th arrondissement in northern Paris was supposed to be celebrating its renaissance this fall with the old state funeral parlor transformed into a major new arts quarter opening next month.
But north of the canal, a war between rival gangs on high-rise housing estates has escalated, with riot police moving in to control it. For 15 years, local rivalries between the Curial and Riquet housing estates have seen vicious knife-fights and score-settling, but now more youths are turning to the gun.
Last week, a 23-year-old postman was shot dead in the street. Days afterward, a man from a rival estate survived a shooting, but was left with serious leg injuries. On Wednesday, two teenagers were being treated in hospital after an attack in which one of them had his stomach slashed open with a knife only meters from the site of the fatal shooting.
“There are two 19th arrondissements, the rich and us, and we’re being shut away in high-rises and forgotten,” the mother of one teenager said.
Local youths have been reduced to the slang labels black, beur, (north African) or feuj, the back-to-front slang for juif or Jew. Last summer, a local Jewish teenager was left in a coma after an attack that caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy to make a statement warning against anti-semitism. But social workers believe the real divide is not over race or religion but geography, with streets tagged as frontiers or no-go zones and youths targeted according to the estate where they live.
A town hall official, who researched the cause of the “war” between the rival high-rises, said he was at a loss to determine the origin of the feud — whether it was a soccer match gone wrong or a robbery. He likened it to an age-old family feud in Brittany — no one could remember why they were fighting any more.
“I don’t even want to bring my three-year-old son to see my mother in case he gets shot,” said Khedidja, 27.
Her brother, Moussa, 23, was shot in the leg last week as he left his apartment block to see friends after breaking the Ramadan fast.
“People don’t want to go out anymore. It’s as if the estate you come from is stamped on your forehead and the others see you as the enemy. I refuse to be scared, that would mean they’ve won,” Khedidja said.
She said neither her brother, from Cural estate, nor the murder victim, from Riquet estate, were gang leaders — they had simply been caught in the crossfire.
“This is nowhere near over,” said one social worker, arguing for better education facilities and youth groups.
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