The New French Revolution
(CBS) For almost half a century, Europe has depended on imported labor to do the kind of menial jobs its own people don't want to do -- so much so that, today, the population of France is almost 10 percent Muslim.
They are the descendants of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian workers who came from France's ex-colonies.
Now, many of them live in neglected public housing projects, ruled by violent gangs and increasingly susceptible to Islamic fundamentalism.
When people talk about ghettos in France, they're talking about high-rise complexes that have been built far away from the city center to house African and Arab immigrants.
Just saying you live in the neighborhood is enough to get your job application thrown in the garbage. And the unemployment amongst young people is four times the national average.
With little hope of making it outside the projects, many of these young men try to dominate their own neighborhoods, resorting to violence, especially against young women.
They rule gangland style, combined with the male-dominated traditions of the Arab countries they came from. It's gotten so bad that, today, most of the young women only feel safe if they are covered up, or if they stay at home. Girls who want to look just like other French girls are considered provocative, asking for trouble.
Samira Bellil wasn't asking for trouble, but trouble came to her. She's the granddaughter of Algerian immigrants and she's written a book about surviving the hell of the Paris ghettos.
"I was gang raped by three people I knew, and I couldn't say anything, because in my culture, your family is dishonored if you lose your virginity,” says Bellil. “So I kept quiet, and the rapes continued. The next time, I was pulled off a commuter train and no one lifted a finger to help me. …Everybody turned their head away. They were all looking out the window.”
When Bellil's family discovered that she had been raped, they weren't sympathetic. They threw her out onto the streets. But she's since discovered that what happened to her was not the only case.
“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.”
When the verdicts came down in this case, the courthouse turned into a madhouse. Eighteen teenagers were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl over a two-month period. But what really shocked France was how the mothers of those boys reacted.
“You call this justice, seven years in prison for some oral sex,” says one mother. “It's the girl who should be behind bars.”
Aboubacar was one of those convicted, not of raping the girl, but of knowing about it, and doing nothing to stop it. “When you live in a neighborhood that's so dark and tough, you can’t mess with others' business, unless you want to put your life on the line,” says Aboubacar.
He received a suspended sentence, and now he's using his rap music to spread the message that violence is wrong.
“We were gangsters. If someone was robbing a house, I had to follow the group, otherwise they'd say I wasn't a man,” says Aboubacar. “Men are stronger than women. Men are more respected than women. So if I don't have many brothers, my sister can be attacked. But if I come from a big family, people will lower their eyes when they pass my sister. That's part of the law.”
