Analyses are not enough

The banlieux, the bleak housing estates on the outskirts of Paris, are once again in the headlines due to the violent unrest in recent days that has caused a wave of injuries and destruction: cars set alight, police stations sacked. The disorders began when two youths aged 15 and 16 were killed following a collision with a police patrol car. Their death unleashed a wave of protest that spread from Villiers-le-be and involved five neighbouring communes. It seems like a replay of what happened in October 2005, after two adolescent Muslims, aged 15 and 17, were killed by electric shock from a power line. On his return from a visit to China, French President Nicolas Sarkozy went to the suburb of Paris where the trouble had broken out and visited the hospital of Eaubonne where an injured policeman remains critically ill. Then at the Elysée he received the parents of the two killed teenagers. On leaving their meeting with Sarkozy, their lawyer JEAN-PIERRE MIGNARD announced that a judicial inquiry would be opened to clarify the circumstances of the death of the two youths. “The Head of State – said Mignard – shared the concern of the parents of the two boys that the truth of the whole affair be established and announced that a judicial inquiry would be opened and an investigating magistrate appointed”. “The President of the Republic – continued the lawyer – has made the right decision since it will permit the families of the victims and their lawyers to participate actively in establishing the truth”. MESSAGE OF HOPE . “Hope never disappoints”. That is the crux of the message that FRÈRE ALOIS , successor of Frère Fr. Roger at the head of the ecumenical Community of Taizé, will bring to the youth of the Parisian banlieu on Sunday 2nd December (on his return from a journey to Asia). Fr. Alois will participate together with the Bishop of Saint Denis (Paris), the Most Rev. Olivier de Berranger, in a meeting of prayer and reflection with the youth of the Ile de France, in preparation for the meeting with European youth at the end of the year. These annual youth meetings of the Taizé community were begun by Frère Roger over thirty years ago to make with them a “pilgrimage of hope” along the roads of the world. VITAL REPLIES . “The youth of the banlieux of Paris – says FRÈRE EMILE – are invariably considered due to the objective problems and difficulties of which they are the victims. But never do people indicate to them the signs of hope of which they could be protagonists. They are judged by their geographical situation and never considered for what they are. And for this reason they are strongly discriminated against”. “In our time – adds Frère Emile – there’s no shortage of analyses. Everyone knows what ought to be done to live in a different way, and not to succumb to the temptation of acquiescence. Denunciation, exhortation, is no longer enough. The current context underlines vital questions: how can we re-invigorate the will of young people that has been weakened and can easily lead to discouragement? How can we give fresh impetus to the attitudes of hope, solidarity and brotherhood? It is by trying to reply to such questions that Frère Roger conceived the European youth meetings over 30 years ago. From city to city, these meetings have represented in time a parabola of hope in the world”. The day before he died, Fr. Roger had begun to write the usual “Letter” he addressed to youth every year. It remained unfinished, but it began like this: “I leave you peace, I give you my peace: what is this peace that God gives? Above all it is an interior peace, a peace of the heart. It is the peace that enables us to look with hope on the world, even if it is so often torn by violence and conflict”. TENSE ATMOSPHERE . In the autumn of 2005, a survey commissioned by the Catholic daily La Croix showed that 69% of the French think that “the inadequate control of parents of their children” was the main cause of violence in the suburbs. The social situation in fact is more complex than that: it presents an extremely difficult and complex combination of circumstances. Of course, family breakdown, the fragmentation of the social fabric within the family, is self-evident: the data presented by La Croix present a picture of working single mothers, very long commuting times, presence of families in extremely small homes, unemployment and loss of parental authority. “In periods of crisis and alienation from family life – says MARIE-CHATAL DURU , delegate of the Federation of Social Centres at Seine-Saint Denis – the life of the associations can be transformed into an important factor of security and support for young people”. Many church associations are investing heavily on this, and their by now well-established presence – both Catholics and Protestants – is strong in working class quarters: they include Caritas France, Worker Mission, JOC, religious congregations, and the people’s missions of the Protestant Churches. Those who live and work in these quarters, however, are pessimistic. GUILLAUME LESAGE , head of the Oscar-Romero school at Garges, of the Brothers of Christian Schools, speaks of a tense atmosphere, perhaps even tenser than it was two years ago. “Students have little confidence in the future and clearly say so in these protests”.