France Protests Spread to Switzerland

THE TELEGRAPH: Police say violence has begun following calls on social media as young people 'inspired by situation in France'

Days of unrest and rioting in France have spread overnight to neighbouring Switzerland, after spilling over into Belgium earlier in the week.

In the Swiss city of Lausanne, there were clashes between police and groups of protesters, most of them young – an echo of the profile of many of the rioters in France. Seven people were detained, most of them teenagers, after several shop windows in Lausanne were smashed.

Around 100 people gathered on Saturday night in the centre of the city, which is located in the mainly French-speaking western part of Switzerland. Young people threw paving stones and at least one Molotov cocktail at officers, police said in a statement.

“Echoing the events and riots raging in France, more than a hundred youths gathered in central Lausanne and damaged businesses,” the Lausanne police said in a statement. » | Nick Squires | Sunday, July 2, 2023

New Wave of Overnight Rage Rocks France; Officer in Police Shooting Will Be Investigated

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The authorities said that 150 people had been arrested after protesters burned cars and buildings for the second night in a row in response to the killing of a 17-year-old driver by a police officer.

PARIS — French prosecutors on Thursday urged that a police officer be placed under investigation for voluntary homicide after the deadly shooting of a 17-year-old driver set off violent riots in more than a dozen cities overnight, with protesters burning cars, lighting buildings on fire and setting off fireworks for the second day in a row.

President Emmanuel Macron convened a crisis meeting after the unrest. In comments broadcast by French television at the start of the meeting on Thursday, he called the violent protests “absolutely unjustifiable” and appealed for calm after the death of the teenager, who has been identified only as Nahel M.

Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said that 150 people had been arrested overnight after the wave of unrest, and that town halls, schools and police stations had been set on fire or attacked. He called it “a night of intolerable violence against symbols of the Republic.”

Police stations were vandalized or targeted with fireworks in cities including Trappes, near Paris, and Rouen, in the north. In Clamart, a Paris suburb, a tramway was briefly set ablaze. » | Aurelien Breeden, Reporting from Paris | Thursday, June 29, 2023


Demonstrators clashed with riot police officers in the Paris suburb of Nanterre after the police fatally shot a 17-year-old driver during a traffic stop. | Zakaria Abdelkafi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tunisian Salafi Islamists Riot, Clash with Police
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: TUNIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of Salafi Islamists attacked bars and shops and clashed with security forces in a Tunisian town on Saturday in the latest incident to raise religious tensions in the home of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Police and witnesses in the northwestern town of Jendouba [F] said hundreds of Salafis - followers of a puritanical interpretation of Islam - began rioting to protest the arrest of four men in connection with previous attacks on alcohol vendors.

Police responded with tear gas, breaking up the crowd, but clashes had yet to die down, witnesses and police said.

"This morning, four men were arrested in connection with attacks on alcohol vendors in recent days," Interior Ministry official Lutfi al-Haydari told Reuters.

"So hundreds of Salafis attacked the security base, pelting it with rocks and petrol bombs before they were dispersed by tear gas. They also set fire to a police station and attacked three shops in the town ... they are now in the centre of town and are being dealt with." » | Tarek Amara, Reuters | Saturday, May 26, 2012

Egyptian Christians Riot after Fatal Shooting
THE GUARDIAN: Churchgoers targeted after Coptic Christmas Eve mass in apparent payback for alleged rape of Muslim girl by Christian

Clashes between thousands of protesters and riot police shook Egypt today after six Coptic Christians were murdered, prompting some of the worst sectarian violence the country has seen.

The victims were gunned down in a drive-by shooting as they emerged from church in the early hours of this morning following a Coptic Christmas Eve mass. Egypt's interior ministry said it believed the attack, in the southern town of Naga Hammadi, 40 miles north of Luxor, was in revenge for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man last year. A Muslim security guard was also killed.

"It is all religious now," said the church's Bishop Kirollos. "This is a religious war, about how they can finish off the Christians in Egypt." >>> Jack Shenker in Cairo | Thursday, January 07, 2010

Fresh Clashes Hit Greek Capital
BBC: Greek students have attacked police in the capital, Athens, in the latest outbreak of protests over the killing of a teenaged boy last Saturday.

The authorities say at least one person was injured as protesters threw stones and firebombs at a police station, near the city's main university.

Students are also reported to have set up road blocks in some parts of Athens.

A policeman has been charged over the youth's death. His lawyer says the bullet that killed him was a ricochet.

But the ballistics report has not yet been officially published.

An unnamed police official said that an elderly bystander had been taken to hospital after being struck by a rock in the latest violence.

A further incident was reported outside a university and one of Greece's biggest prisons in the Athens suburb of Koyrdallos.

There were also reports of unrest in Thessaloniki, Greece's second city.

Hundreds of buildings and businesses across the country have been damaged in the five days of rioting. >>> | December 11, 2008

Watch BBC video: Police defend themselves from attack >>>

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Greek Unrest Spreads: Solidarity Protests Across Europe Turn Violent
Demonstrators in Rome. Photo courtesy of SpiegelOnline International
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: As Greece entered its sixth day of unrest sparked by the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy, violence spread to other parts of Europe on Thursday. Solidarity protests in cities including Rome, Madrid and Copenhagen turned into skirmishes between demonstrators and police.

The unrest that has gripped Greece for days has started to spill over into other European capitals, with arrests made in Rome, Copenhagen and Madrid on Wednesday night after solidarity demonstrations descended into violence.

The situation in Greece itself had calmed somewhat by mid-morning Thursday following pre-dawn violence which saw students clash with police. Youth threw stones and fire bombs at police in the early hours of the morning in the sixth day of protests since the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos ingited anger over police brutality. The events have also stoked public anger with the government -- resentment that was already widespread following a series of financial scandals and unpopular reforms.

Much of the worst violence has been perpetrated by young anarchists, the so-called Black Bloc. But there is growing anger among the wider public about the inability of the government to control the situation and restore calm. On Wednesday a general strike across Greece halted flights and closed banks, schools and some hospital services.

Meanwhile, flourishes of violence spread to other parts of Europe. In Istanbul about a dozen Turkish left-wing protestors daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate, while the country's embassies in Rome and Moscow were attacked by fire bombers and stone throwers. In the Italian university town of Bologna, five police officers were reported injured after clashing with demonstrators outside the Greek consulate. >>> smd -- with wire reports | December 11, 2008

GLOBEANDMAIL: Ugly Tactics of the Rioters Now Coming Under Attack

Watching television and video coverage of the riots that have swept through Greece this week, it is hard not to notice something curious: The police, for the most part, do not seem to be fighting back.

Except when stoned or pelted with Molotov cocktails themselves, they often left the rioters alone to smash store windows and set fire to buildings.

That apparent restraint springs from a November night in 1973 when the forces of a six-year-old dictatorship battered their way onto the campus of the Athens Polytechnic. No one knows the exact toll, but something like 40 people were killed, and the anger over their deaths helped bring down the military government.

Ever since, student protesters have enjoyed a special status in Greece. Lionized for bringing down the regime of the colonels, they take to the streets with a frequency and a ferocity that is unusual even in Europe. >>> Marcus Gee | December 10, 2008

TIMESONLINE: Greek Violence Spreads across Europe

Suspected anarchist protests which have dogged Greece for the last week spread outside the country today, with mobs causing violent scenes in Italy, Spain, Russia, Denmark and Turkey.

Greek diplomatic missions were vandalised in the attacks, while police, local authority and media representatives were also targeted in what appeared a co-ordinated escalation.

The upsurge took place as protests continued in Greece following the killing last Saturday of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
Today, mobs pelted 20 police stations with rocks and bottles, overturned cars and blocked streets in central Athens. Police responded with tear gas as sporadic violence persisted amid Greece’s worst rioting in decades.

Four people were detained and at least one man was hospitalised with injuries, authorities said. In a gesture which appeared designed to ease the violence, MPs held a minute of silence for Mr Grigoropoulos.

Yet what were originally relatively localised protests over the killing have since been hijacked by mobs of self-styled anarchists who authorities say are looking for trouble, and today they spread out of Greece for the first time.

In Denmark, a total of 32 people were arrested in Copenhagen after protests turned violent while, in Madrid and Barcelona, several police officers were injured and 11 people were arrested following clashes.

The violence also spread to Turkey, where a dozen protesters were reported to have painted the Turkish-flag red on the Greek consulate. In Moscow and Rome, meanwhile, petrol bombs were reported to have been aimed at Greek Embassies.

Meanwhile, a crew of television journalists from Russia were attacked by 50 youths as they filmed clashes in Exarchia, Greece, a known hotbed of student radicalism. One correspondent from the NTV television station was injured. >>> David Byers | December 11, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Violence Across Pakistan in Wake of Bhutto’s Assassination

THE TELEGRAPH: Pakistani security forces were given orders to shoot on sight today to curb unrest as millions across the country mourned Benazir Bhutto.

The former prime minister and leading opposition figure was laid to rest in her family's mausoleum a day after her assassination by Islamic extremists.

Her simple coffin, draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party, was greeted by huge crowds at her ancestral grave in the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in the southern province of Sind.

Accompanied by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and three children, her body was carried in a white ambulance as it made its way towards the white Mogulesque mausoleum surrounded by hundreds of thousands of mourners. Violence as millions mourn Benazir Bhutto >>> By Isambard Wilkinson, Pakistan Correspondent

The West’s greatest test since September 11 By David Blair

Pakistan faces horror of civil war after Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in suicide attack By Isambard Wilkinson, Pakistan Correspondent, Richard Edwards and David Blair

Bhutto's death is victory for Islamic hardliners By Con Coughlin

Why the fanatics wanted Benazir Bhutto dead By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent

NZZ:
Mächtiger Trauerzug begleitet Bhuttos Sarg zum Grab: In Familienmausoleum beigesetzt

WELTONLINE:
Atomwaffen und Islamisten sind sich nah wie nie

LE MONDE:
Benazir Bhutto a été inhumée devant des centaines de milliers de Pakistanais

Edito du "MONDE":
Le Pakistan en danger

Un attentat que "la Sultane" redoutait : "J'en rendrai Musharraf responsable", confiait-elle

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)