A report from the Paris Police’s intelligence branch has reportedly found that radical presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left La France Insoumise party instigated the youth riots which plunged much of the country into chaos this week.
Over 5,000 people were arrested this week as mayhem broke out around the so-called student actions at over a thousand high schools across France, in which multicultural youths ran roughshod, engaging in mindless destruction and wanton violence, including attacks on police and innocent bystanders, arson, and vandalism
According to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, some 85 per cent of the arrests made during the riots were under the age of 18.
However, a report from the Paris Police Prefect claimed that other forces were likely pulling the strings behind the scenes, finding that “the origins of the movement clearly lie in the manipulation of student union structures and political movements close to the far left.”
The report, obtained by Le Figaro, claimed that members of political organisations such as the Young Revolutionary Communists and the La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon may have a “strategy of igniting unrest on the part of the most radical union and political structures to impose their ideas as national elections approach.”
While the students largely displayed “a clear desire for disorder, notably through the commission of urban violence, without any specific social demands,” the police report said that “clearly, high school students are being pushed into these actions by far-left elements identified both within student union structures at Paris 8 University (Le Poing levé, FSE), or Paris Nanterre (FSE).”
The police report noted that some of the actions taken by youth rioters pointed to “remote control” from left-wing unions, including prompt mobilisation outside of police stations following arrests of rioters for mortar attacks, protests which they said were “common for these organisations but quite rare among young people.”
Meanwhile, of the forty arrests detailed in the report, around a quarter were identified as far-left activists who had left high school long ago, having been born between 1999 and 2005.
The sentiment that the far-left was manipulating the street violence was also shared by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, whose office said this week that the intelligence service believed that the riots were a “manoeuvre organised by LFI and its far-left proxies.”
Rather than backing down, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears intent on doubling down. In a blog post on Saturday, Mélenchon, who participated in the 1968 student riots in France, called on his supporters to join the planned “Act III” student protests this week.
The 75-year-old presidential candidate claimed that the involvement of his party over the past week on the ground at protests was necessary to protect the students from police violence.
“Our duty is to help and protect our young people. That’s why I proposed, like others, deploying “white helmets” or white armbands around and within the demonstrations on October 6th, as was done in the past after the death of Malik Oussekine or to protect the high school student demonstrations of the 1990s,” he wrote.
The youth riots have already proved costly, with initial estimates of damages ranging into the tens of millions. According to the leader of the Île-de-France regional council, Valérie Pécresse, some “seven million euros already gone up in smoke”. The president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Fabrice Pannekoucke, said that his area likely saw between 25 and 30 million euros in damages.
However, this may be outweighed by the human toll, with some victims suffering life-altering injuries, including a woman who had her face burned with a homemade flamethrower while she was waiting for a bus in Marseille. On Sunday, local prosecutors announced that a 15-year-old had been arrested over the incident and “was brought before an investigating judge for formal charges of acts of barbarity”.
Speaking to BFMTV, the victim said: “I didn’t expect such violence… To see a kid you don’t know, someone you were talking to normally, deliberately aiming at your face… He didn’t aim for your clothes, he didn’t aim for your legs. He aimed for my face. Why?”