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METROPOLICE
Urban discontent spills over into violence in a Parisian metro station. Isolated moment of madness, or symptom of a fraught and divided society?
Foto: Indymedia
| Tino Brömme (PARIS). Metro Paris, next stop Gare du Nord. “Tickets please!” — A routine control catches, as usual, a ticketless young man. One thing leads to another — was it the teenager getting nasty, or the Gestapo tone of the controllers? — soon the whole carriage is in uproar, with many passengers defending the fare dodger against these authoritarian bullies. Then the train stops, but the quarrel continues on the platform and spreads. While one person is calling the police, someone else is getting his friends to come. And now it gets messy: in the crowded Parisian station (an intersection for people from all over the city) several police squads move in, cornering people and dispersing gathering groups with brutality. A spark of rage inflames the mob. Windows and billboards are smashed, seats are ripped up, all kinds of objects thrown or broken. Up on the surface, the riot reaches its climax: hundreds of policemen chase and obstruct the protesters who, in the late afternoon, already number over four hundred. The fighting has surged up from the lower to the higher levels, overrunning the entire station. Plants are hurled down from balconies and shops are looted, as the cops slowly succeed in pushing the focus of the violence outside onto the street. Reinforcements turn up in the form of newly arrived passengers, who join in the spontaneous uproar and bolster the protesters’ lines. Choirs are formed who scream “Sarkozy, son of a bitch!” or “Police everywhere, justice nowhere”. It is only after eight hours of continuous fighting that, around midnight, the crowd finally disperses in the streets and leaves a completely devastated station behind.
We asked Mathilde Clausonne, a 28 year old job-seeking Parisienne, who witnessed the whole story on Tuesday 27th March in the news. Read the interview here
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