To each his own. In France they celebrate New Year’s Eve by torching cars. In the U.S. we celebrate by firing our pistols and rifles into the air. Apparently no one has been hurt by the torchings. Unfortunately for us, our morons don’t seem to know the laws of physics – what goes up must come down – so that a number of people have been injured or even killed by falling bullets fired from far away.
FRANCE BRACES FOR ANNUAL NEW YEAR’S CAR TORCHINGS
The Straits Times
December 31, 2010
PARIS - FRANCE will deploy extra police and keep vandalism statistics under wraps on New Year's Eve to fight what authorities say has become an annual 'sweepstakes' of disaffected youths competing to see who can burn the most cars.
Youths in depressed suburbs of French cities have been torching hundreds of vehicles on New Year's Eve and Bastille Day since the early 1990s. Police say the annual rite has turned competitive, with youths tracking the news in the first days of the new year to see which neighbourhood did the most damage.
'I have decided to put an end to the competition, the sweepstakes, and will longer publish the number of burnt vehicles,' Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said this week, adding that publishing statistics encouraged vandalism.
Opposition politicians described the move as an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government to cover up the violence.
'The government tends to eliminate unfavourable indicators. The interior minister has been publishing trumped-up statistics for years, and now Hortefeux is going even further,' Socialist deputy Delphine Batho, a security specialist, told Reuters.
Last year, the Interior Ministry said 1,137 cars had been torched, a 30 per cent rise on 2008. French media reported at the time that several thousand cars had been burnt. -- REUTERS
No comments:
Post a Comment