Timeline of The 2005 French Civil Unrest - Fourth Week

Fourth Week

• Thursday November 17
  • Day
    • French police say levels of violence in France have returned to "normal", following three weeks of unrest by urban youths across the country. Police said 98 vehicles were torched on Wednesday night, marking a "return to a normal situation everywhere in France". The police service said the figure of 98 cars burnt was in line with the nightly average before the trouble began on 27 October. Authorities in the Rhone region, which covers Lyon and nearby south-eastern towns, lifted a curfew on minors after just eight cars were destroyed overnight.
    • French Muslim leaders denounced on Thursday efforts to blame Muslims and Islam for recent riots in the country's rundown suburbs and said they saw worrying signs of growing prejudice against their faith here. Many young rioters may have been from Muslim backgrounds, but their violent outburst was a protest against unemployment, poor housing and other bias they faced because of their foreign origins, they told journalists. "They didn't act like that because they're Muslims, but because of the misery they're living in", said Kamel Kabtane, rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon in eastern France. "There weren't just Mohammads and Alis in those groups (of rioters) -- there were Tonys and Daniels too", said Dalil Boubakeur, the Paris Grand Mosque rector who is also head of France's official Muslim Council (CFCM).

• Friday November 18
  • Day
    • French Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag has urged the government to overturn a ban on collecting data based on ethnicity or religion. Government bodies and private companies are barred from gathering such data - which is deemed potentially divisive. But M. Begag told Le Figaro newspaper it was important to assess the presence of minorities in various professions. Job discrimination was a key complaint voiced by many youths who rioted in immigrant suburbs in recent weeks. "We need to see France's true colours", M. Begag said. "To do that, we need to measure the proportion of immigrant children among the police, magistrates, in the civil service as well as in the private sector."