Economist.com Cities Guide: Paris Briefing - March 2006

News this month

Torture in the suburbs

France has been reeling from the news of the kidnap, torture and murder of a 23-year-old Jewish man. Ilan Halimi was discovered on February 13th—three weeks after his disappearance—near a railway track outside Paris, naked, gagged and handcuffed, with signs of torture and burn marks over 80% of his body. He died on the way to hospital. The crimes appear to have been motivated by anti-Semitism, but Halimi’s family alleges that the police and the government took too long to admit this, in order to avoid upsetting French Muslims.

The suspected gang leader is a Frenchman, Youssouf Fofana, who was arrested in the Côte d’Ivoire on February 22nd, following a tip-off. He is believed to have confessed to taking part in the crimes and was extradited on March 4th. Police say the gang was behind at least six other attempted kidnappings in and around Paris. After Halimi's disappearance on January 21st, his family began receiving threats and demands for a ransom that began at €450,000 ($537,000) and decreased to under €100,000. Tens of thousands of marchers gathered in Paris and other French cities on the 26th to protest against the killing. In the same suburb where Halimi was killed, Jewish leaders say there were three anti-Semitic attacks over the weekend of March 3rd. Extra police officers have been hired to monitor synagogues in the area.

Making light of the prophet

On February 1st France-Soir, a daily newspaper, became one of the first journals to reprint a now-infamous set of Danish-made cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The Egyptian-French owner of France-Soir, Raymond Lakah, sacked the editor, Jacques Lefranc, but not before the newspaper had been banned in Morocco and Tunisia. Meanwhile, Le Monde published several other cartoons, as well as an original drawing by its famous cartoonist, Plantu, showing the face of Muhammad by using the phrase “I must not depict the prophet”. Libération, the popular centre-left paper, showed the cartoons in a photo, while Charlie Hébdo, a satirical weekly, ran all 12 of the drawings after a judge threw out a last-minute legal bid to halt their release.

The Parisian press was not alone in confronting the controversy, but the issue is particularly sensitive here. France has Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated at 5m-6m, many of them in the Paris region. The MRAP, an anti-racism group, has already filed suit against France-Soir over the publication of the images. Meanwhile the Council of French Muslims, an umbrella organisation, said it would take legal action against all French papers which published the cartoons.

A popular choice

Francoise de Panafieu will be the Union for a Popular Movement's candidate in Paris's mayoral election in 2008. Ms Panafieu won about 40% of a leadership poll held on February 25th, with the second-placed challenger, Claude Goasguen, securing just over 23%. The two candidates were expected to contest a second, run-off vote. But Mr Goasguen dropped out of the race on February 28th, clearing the way for Ms Panafieu to secure the nomination.

Ms Panafieu is not short of experience: she was deputy to both Jean Tiberi and Jacques Chirac when each was Paris's mayor, and was tourism minister under prime minister Alain Juppe. She is also popular among women, no less so for boasting to Le Monde that her sex was an advantage, since “women are less worn down, and men have proved disappointing”.

Jailhouse shock

The Council of Europe, a human-rights watchdog, has delivered a damning report on France’s prisons, calling them “catastrophic”. One of the most shocking places visited by Alvaro Gil-Robles, the council’s human-rights commissioner, was in the belly of the historic Palais de Justice—a group of courts on Paris's Ile de la Cité, which also houses an underground detention centre for migrants threatened with expulsion. “It is of the utmost urgency to shut this place, which is the very embodiment of a serious human rights violation,” he wrote, describing men packed into rooms with only a tiny, dirty courtyard and television to occupy them. Meanwhile, conditions at Paris’s Prison de la Santé, like that of the Baumettes in Marseilles, nearly exceed “the limits of human dignity”.

Mr Gil-Robles attributed many of the problems to overcrowding, a result of the trend towards longer sentences and limited funding for prison construction and renovation. According to statistics released on February 10th, French prisons are running at 116% of their capacity. France’s justice minister, Pascal Clement, criticised the council’s report as “unfair”, saying unprecedented efforts were being made to modernise jails and create over 13,000 new places. Nicolas Sarkozy, the powerful interior minister, promised the Palais de Justice centre would be shut in June.

Mayoral weakness

Parisians have surprised pollsters with their long-standing, almost gleeful support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor. But a survey conducted last month showed his popularity rating dropping to 60%, down from 78% three years earlier. A study by the CSA Institute for Le Parisien and Le Nouvel Observateur indicates a backlash against the changes to the road system undertaken by Mr Delanoë’s administration: 69% of respondents were unhappy with traffic and 66% with parking. The only issues to create more discontent are the cost of housing and the state of council housing. “For the first time since 2001, people are saying Bertrand Delanoë can be beaten in Paris!” enthused Philippe Goujon, the city's chief of the rival UMP party. But Parisians are still happy with the mayor's environmental record, with 68% approving of his performance on public transport.

Catch if you can

March 2006

Dora Maar

Until May 22nd 2006

Dora Maar was Pablo Picasso’s companion and muse from 1935 to 1945. In this exhibit, Maar's role is elevated to that of a collaborator during one of the Spanish master’s most fertile periods. A photographer associated with the Surrealist movement, Maar—whose real name was Henriette Markovitch—often documented Picasso at work. This show features her images of the painter, some displayed here for the first time, including an arresting series on the making of “Guernica”, Picasso’s compelling response to the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, among the abundance of works on view—nearly 250 covering the years 1936 to 1945—it is the paintings chronicling tragedy, including “The Charnel House” in 1945, and the portraits of Maar as “The Crying Woman”, that hold the attention.

Musée Picasso, Hôtel Salé, 5, rue de Thorigny, 3rd arrondissement, Métro: Saint Paul, Saint-Sébastien Froissart, Chemin Vert. Tel: +33 (0)1 42 71 25 21. Open: Wed-Mon 9.30am-5.30pm. For more information see the museum’s website.

More from the Paris cultural calendar