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Michael Gove
News > World > Europe
Marseille: Europe's most dangerous place to be young
[Pg-28-marseille-afp.jpg]
[Pg-28-marseille-afp.jpg]
Away from its glamorous tourist centre, 15 men have died this year as
the city's drug war spirals out of control. John Lichfield reports
John Lichfield Author Biography
[Lichfield.jpg]
John Lichfield
John Lichfield has been The Independent's man in Paris since 1997,
covering French news. Before that, he was the paper's Foreign Editor
and he has also worked in Brussels and Washington.
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To understand Marseille catch a bus – bus number 30 from the
Bougainville metro station. The route starts at the northern terminus
of the metro system, five kilometres from the city centre. It winds
past motorways, factories, unofficial rubbish tips and a 10th-century
monastery.
France's second city sprawls for another 10 kilometres over ridge after
ridge of limestone hills. Each is crowned by a white citadel gleaming
in the Mediterranean sunshine which, as the bus approaches, turns into
a group of shabby tower blocks.
Up to the 1960s, these were the scrubland and the hard-scrabble
villages of the Marcel Pagnol novels set in the early part of the
century. Fragments of the Provençal villages can still be seen. The
"garrigue", or scrub, survives on the jagged mountains which crowd in
from the east. But Marius, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources and
their descendants have long gone. My fellow passengers on the 45-minute
ride to La Savine, one of the northernmost estates, are a blend of
North Africans, Africans, Asians and Roma.
The bus passes through the poorest districts of the poorest city in
France. Almost 40 per cent of people who live here are below the
poverty line, compared to 26 per cent in Marseille as a whole and 15
per cent nationally. In the richer, mostly white, areas south of the
city centre, the risk of dying before the age of 65 is 23 per cent
below the national average. In north Marseille, it is 30 per cent
higher than the French average.
If you are a teenage boy or young man from northern Marseille, you risk
dying long before the age of 65. Fifteen young men, mostly from the
city's northern districts, have been shot dead this year as part of a
war for the lucrative franchise to sell drugs – mostly cannabis and
cocaine – to the people from the wealthier parts of the city and the
suburbs.
In fact, there have been almost as many killings of young men in the
first nine months of 2012 as in the whole of last year. Proportionally,
Marseille (population 800,000), now has almost as many drug-related
murders as New York (population 8,000,000). Eyeing the issues, the
French government has announced emergency action this month to stop the
city, which will be the "European capital of culture" from January,
from claiming title of the European capital of youth murder.
At the end of the bus ride to La Savine, I met Rachida Tir, leader of
the estate's resident's association. "For seven years now we have been
losing our young men," she said. "This is not just about drug
trafficking. That alone cannot explain the killing."
"There is a suicidal instinct, a desperation in some of these boys. It
starts with failure and rejection at school and the lack of jobs. They
see no future. They live for the present, in a world of easy money and,
now, violence."
Earlier this month, Samia Ghali, the mayor of the 15th and 16th
arrondissements of Marseille, which embrace most of the poor northern
districts, detonated a verbal bombshell. She said that the drug-related
violence in northern Marseille had become so extreme that only the army
could defeat it. She called on the government to deploy troops to
confiscate the cheap automatic weapons flowing in from the Balkans and
North Africa and to interrupt a drug trade which is, she says,
conducted with impunity.
Ms Ghali, a child of northern Marseilles like Zinedine Zidane and Eric
Cantona, admits that her proposal was mostly a "cry of alarm". "I was
born and grew up here. I know what I'm talking about," she said. "I can
no longer stomach seeing children that I have known since they were
born drilled with holes. I cannot forget the distress of the girlfriend
of [a recent victim] who found him shot 30 times. It is time to stop
the massacre." Ms Ghali, a Socialist, berates the attitude of some
politicians and commentators – including the centre-right mayor of
Marseille Jean-Claude Gaudin - who dismiss the murders as "règlements
de compte" ("tit-for-tat killings" or "a turf war"). "By using that
kind of language, you're saying that these murders – and murder is
the right word – are separate from polite society or the law," she
said. "You are saying, 'let them kill each other'." Back in the busy,
friendly centre of Marseille – a different planet from Bougainville
and La Savine – I met Laurent Gaudon, a lawyer who has represented
families of the victims. He also disputes the phrase "turf war". "Often
it is not clear why these kids are dying," he said. "In one case I had
last year a boy of 17 was shot because he had been disrespectful to
another young man. The killer wanted to prove that he was tough enough
to be in a drug gang." Marseille has always had gangland killings, Mr
Gaudon said. "This is the city of the French Connection. All the
organised crime of the Mediterranean basin passes through here –
Corsicans, Sicilians."
In the late 1990's the police dismantled the biggest of the old crime
gangs. Since then the kids in the poorer estates have gradually taken
over the local drugs trade. "The old gangsters had a code of honour but
not the new ones," Mr Gaudon said. "The kids can buy guns for next to
nothing and they use them for next to nothing."
Ms Ghali's call for military intervention was dismissed as absurd by
local and national politicians of Left and Right. It was, all the same,
hugely successful. Within days, the government had drawn up an action
plan to "rescue Marseille". The interior minister, Manuel Valls, and
justice minister, Christiane Taubira, were in the city last week to set
up a new "priority security zone" in the northern districts. There are
to be 230 extra police officers and – for the first time in any
French city other than Paris – a proper city police chief or "Prefect
de Police". The Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, has also promised
the city the political and economic weight it needs to become a
thriving "mediterranean metropolis".
The population within the city boundary is relatively poor. Many richer
people – the great grand-children of Jean de Florette and Manon des
Sources – have moved out to the suburbs. This is the reverse of the
usual French pattern where the cities are well-heeled and the inner
suburbs poor and troubled.
Mr Ayrault this week appointed another Prefect with the Herculean brief
to dissolve local political jealousies and create a single, political
and economic agglomeration, reconnecting Marseille with its rich
satellite towns. He might begin by trying to dissolve the boundary
between first and third worlds which begins at Bougainville metro
station. "We have been abandoned. Forgotten," said Rachida Tir. "Most
people here want to live decent, legal lives. But what choices do they
have?"
A local mayor said that the drug-related violence was so extreme only
the army could defeat it
Drug war in numbers
26: Percentage of people in Marseille who live below the poverty line,
against 15 per cent nationally.
15: The number of men, mostly from northern districts, shot dead in the
city's drug wars.
300: The number of Kalashnikovs reportedly intercepted in Marseille
this year.
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