I don't know why everyone thinks they're a bunch of pussies. It took balls to blow up that Greenpeace boat, just to take one example. And their football hooligans put Britain to shame.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/wo...pe&oref=slogin
November 29, 2006
Paris Soccer ‘Ultras’ at Center of Furor Over Fan’s Death
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, Nov. 28 — They call themselves the ultras. They are the hardest of the hard-core soccer fans of France, the ones with the edgy reputations for being racist, right-wing, anti-Semitic and even violent.
For two decades, they have operated openly as fan associations without much interference from the police or soccer officials, who have claimed that they have limited authority to stop them.
On Thursday night, a group of these ultra-right-wing supporters of the Paris St.-Germain team set off a chain of events that ended with one of their own being shot to death by a black policeman.
The episode has set off nationwide soul-searching and finger-pointing as the French government as well as soccer officials, analysts and fans have confronted the violence and hate that have poisoned the sport.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and a presidential hopeful, who describes himself as a fan of Paris St.-Germain, has vowed to clean up the Paris stadium, considered the most hostile in all of France, even if it means emptying it of spectators.
“We prefer to see stands that are empty than full of unwanted people,” Mr. Sarkozy told journalists, after meeting with soccer officials and supporters’ groups on Saturday. “We no longer want racists, Nazi salutes, monkey noises in stadiums. Soccer is not war.”
But there is sharp criticism that the government, the Paris St.-Germain team and the official fan clubs that support it have not done enough to curb the phenomenon, for fear of driving away fans. Fines have been imposed only sporadically for racist or violent behavior, and only a small number of unruly fans have been banned from stadiums.
“This problem has gone on since the 1980s, but there hasn’t been the political will to crack down,” said Dominique Bodin, a sociologist and author of a book on sports and violence in Europe, in an interview. “We’re a democracy, and there are laws on the books that have to be enforced. There needs to be better education of the young.”
The police knew in advance that the game on Thursday evening at the Parc des Princes stadium on the edge of Paris could turn ugly. The adversary was a team from Tel Aviv. Extra police officers were on duty.
The trouble began outside the stadium, as is often the case, after the Paris team was defeated, 4-2. Dozens of Paris supporters pursued and cornered Yanniv Hazout, 25, a French fan who is Jewish.
A 32-year-old plainclothes transport police officer, Antoine Granomort, who was guarding a nearby parking lot, rushed to shield him from the crowd.
“The crowd hurled insults — ‘dirty Jew,’ ‘dirty Negro’ and monkey cries — and raised Nazi salutes,” a Paris prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, said afterward. He added that they also shouted, “Le Pen, president!” a reference to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right National Front leader who plans to run for president in the election in April. According to Mr. Sarkozy, some fans shouted, “Death to the Jew!” before attacking Mr. Hazout.
When the crowd began kicking and beating Officer Granomort and apparently threatened to kill the fan he was protecting, he fired his service revolver, killing Julien Quemener, 25, a home appliance technician, and wounding Mounir Boujaer, 26, a truck driver, according to several witness accounts. A fan who called himself Maxmax wrote Friday on an ultra Internet message board that someone shouted, “Jews to the ovens!” after the shooting.
Mr. Quemener was identified as a member of the “Boulogne Boys,” a group of far-right soccer supporters, some of whom are officially registered as troublemakers by the police and banned from the stadium.
A judge must determine officially whether Officer Granomort acted in self-defense, although both French officials and police union representatives have thrown their support behind him.
Not all agree. “I’m telling you, the cop screwed up,” said a witness to the shooting, who refused to give his name because he feared the police would put him under surveillance. “This wasn’t self-defense.”
About 300 supporters of the Paris team held a silent march on Sunday in Nantes in memory of Mr. Quemener, walking behind a banner that read, “Murdering authorities — truth for Julien.”
Violence, some of it racially motivated, is a ritual at soccer games throughout Europe, and some French sports experts say the phenomenon is more dramatic elsewhere.
Last week, for example, about 600 Italian supporters of the Naples team, throwing stones and pieces of metal, clashed with police officers as they forced their way through security barriers to watch a game. Three cars were destroyed and another was set on fire. One 25-year-old fan remains in a coma.
Complicating the situation in France is that there are rival gangs of ultras that divide along racial and ethnic lines, but all support the Paris team.
Last February, for example, members of a multiethnic group known as Tigris Mystic, some apparently wielding machetes and pieces of wood studded with nails, attacked members of an all-white gang at a gas station near the town of Angers after a match. Five people were injured.
But France, with its long history of secularism and official colorblindness, is particularly sensitive to racist, ethnic and anti-Semitic insults and acts, both on and off the soccer field.
The fact that so many of the players on French teams are either black or of North African Arab origin has cut both ways. (On France’s national team that played in the World Cup last summer, 17 of the 23 players were members of minorities.)
While the multiracial character of the sport has long been praised for reflecting diversity in France, some right-wing politicians have criticized soccer teams for not being white enough.
Two weeks ago, Georges Frêche, the Socialist president of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, was quoted as telling a local council that he was ashamed that so many of the 11 starters on the French national team are black.
“It would be normal if there were three or four; that would be a reflection of society,” he was quoted as saying. “But if there are so many, it’s because whites are no good. I’m ashamed for this country. Soon there will be 11 blacks.”
President Jacques Chirac immediately condemned the remarks. Mr. Frêche said his comments had been taken out of context.
Before the 1998 World Cup, Mr. Le Pen called the French team “artificial” because of its ethnic and racial makeup. Last June, before the World Cup, he said France “doesn’t totally recognize itself in this team,” because there may be too many “players of color.”
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Le Pen accused Mr. Marin, the Paris prosecutor, of defamation for suggesting that he was somehow linked to the racism on display on the night of the shooting. He said he was filing a lawsuit.
Certainly, the message of Mr. Le Pen, who faced Mr. Chirac in a runoff in the 2002 election, resonates in France. In a poll published in Le Monde last week, 17 percent of the respondents said they intended to vote for the 78-year-old for president.
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