Killing of Migrant Forces France to Confront Treatment of Chinese

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/world/europe/france-chinese-immigrant-attack.html

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AUBERVILLIERS, France — A Chinese tailor, Zhang Chaolin, emigrated to France with his wife and two sons in 2006 in search of a better life. They settled in Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb of Paris, where a decade of striving finally put that life within reach.

His sons, now in their 20s, work and have their own families. Last year, the younger son had his first child, making Mr. Zhang a grandfather.

But those dreams of stability came to an abrupt end this year under a pleasant August sun. A group of young men, barely old enough to drive, assaulted Mr. Zhang, who was 49, as he walked in Aubervilliers with two friends he had known since childhood.

Shouting racist slurs, the youths took a small bag from one of the men, and savagely beat them, leaving Mr. Zhang and his friends crumpled and bloodied on the sidewalk. The bag contained only candy and cigarettes. Mr. Zhang died five days later.

The death was the culmination of months, even years, of racial tensions in Paris and its suburbs that intensified this summer, fueled by long-held stereotypes of the Chinese as weak yet unusually successful residents of economically disadvantaged, immigrant-heavy suburbs. Often the tensions stem from rivalries between immigrant groups themselves.

While the death surprised few Franco-Asians, it did reveal a volatile racial landscape in France that is far more complex than the country’s French majority and large Muslim minority, whose struggle for integration has received the most attention.

In early September, 60,000 demonstrators of Chinese or other Asian origin marched in Paris to denounce violence and discrimination and to press the government for more vigorous action to ensure the safety of all French citizens, no matter their race. They waved French flags, wore T-shirts emblazoned with the tricolor, and sang “La Marseillaise.”

Racial discrimination and violence, many in the community lament, is a problem that has long defied remedy. Six years ago, people of Chinese origin similarly protested racial violence aimed at them in Paris’s Belleville neighborhood, in the 10th Arrondisement, an area with a large Chinese community.

“In 2010, there were lots of thefts and beatings,” said Frédéric Zhou, Mr. Zhang’s former landlord, who recounted his own instances of verbal abuse and physical threats. “We protested, and the authorities said they would try to stop these attacks. But in six years, it’s gotten worse, and now there’s a death.

“One death isn’t nothing,” he added. “We’re not dogs.”

While conditions in Belleville did improve, violence against people of Asian descent in some other areas appears to have increased. Mr. Zhang’s death followed a steady uptick of violence in Aubervilliers, residents say.

Joelle Huy, the president of the owners’ cooperative of La Résidence du Parc, a majority Chinese housing complex in La Courneuve, a suburb adjacent to Aubervilliers, described an attack on the night of July 13.

“A group of about 10 kids started shooting fireworks at our cars,” she recalled. Residents of the housing complex chased the youths away and called the police. “When the police arrived,” Ms. Huy said, “we told them that this couldn’t go on, and they told us it was nothing.”

A few minutes after the police left, the youths emerged from the darkness with pistols. “They were firing in all directions,” Ms. Huy said, still clearly shocked. “Four people were wounded by bullets.”

During the first seven months of 2016, the police recorded 105 violent thefts targeting Aubervilliers’s residents of Chinese origin, who number 3,000 in a town of more than 77,000 inhabitants. The reported assaults were probably only a fraction of the actual total, because many in the community feel it is useless to go to the police.

“To file a complaint, it takes three hours, the police say they don’t understand the Chinese people, or they say they’re not taking complaints,” said Ms. Huy, who blames government indifference as much as the perpetrators for the violence. “What’s the point? You try to file a complaint, you are rejected.”

The attack at La Courneuve prompted such concern that Chinese in France wrote to the Interior Ministry warning that the situation was growing dire.

“In the letter, they said, ‘What will it take for the government to react?’” recounted Tamara Lui, the president of the Chinese of France-French of China Association. “‘Does someone need to die?’”

A few weeks later, Mr. Zhang did.

The threat has grown so bad, and the lack of government response so enraging, that some Chinese have taken their security into their own hands.

“They organize groups that can accompany people when they leave their homes,” said Sun Lay Tan, a municipal councilor in Mitry-Mory, a suburb of Paris, and the author of a Change.org petition denouncing anti-Asian violence that garnered more than 15,000 signatures. “It’s going to continue because when they call the police, they don’t come.”

Sabrina Goldman, the vice president of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, said the lack of response had engendered “a sense of fatalism” among Chinese. But she also noted that since Mr. Zhang’s death, the problem of anti-Asian violence had gained more recognition. “Racism against the Chinese and Asian communities has long been ignored, and now society is waking up to its existence,” she said.

In September, a court in Bobigny, another Paris suburb, sentenced three young men implicated in the violent mugging of a Chinese family and, for the first time, recognized the crime’s racially motivated character as an “aggravating circumstance.”

The same month, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, a candidate in the 2017 presidential election, visited Aubervilliers and urged Franco-Chinese associations to keep hope for the possibility of “harmony between communities.”

Bernard Cazeneuve, the minister of the interior, has promised to send police reinforcements to Aubervilliers, and Meriem Derkaoui, the mayor of Aubervilliers, pledged to expand video surveillance.

A few months before Mr. Zhang was killed, the Aubervilliers Police Department hired a part-time translator to assist with the filing of complaints on a biweekly basis in an effort to improve relations with residents of Chinese origin. Still, some, including the CGT Police Ile-de-France — the Paris region’s branch of the national police union — say more police officers cannot solve the problem.

“We need a police force that is closer to the local population, one that can anticipate problems in the community,” Axel Ronde, the group’s general secretary, said. “We’ve abandoned this kind of work over the years, so it’s not going to change overnight.”

Others say the solution lies in building better understanding between citizens themselves. “I think we need to create opportunities for mediation and intercommunity exchanges,” said Mr. Sun, the municipal councilor. “I don’t expect much from the state.”