2008-11-04
Riot police were today called into the former capital of France’s Nazi dictatorship after anti-immigration protesters went on the rampage.
Vichy - viewed as an eternal symbol of collaboration - became a battleground late into yesterday night as the town hosted its first international government conference since World War II.
Some people have described the choice of France's pro-Nazi World War II regime's capital, still for many seen as a symbol of France's wartime deportations, to host the summit as a deliberate provocation.
Protesters were demonstrating against France's minister of immigration, integration and national identity Brice Hortefeux's tough stance on expelling illegal immigrants back to their homelands.
Anarchists torched cars and smashed shop windows, as armed police were pelted with rocks and other missiles.
The CRS, France’s elite riot control officers, had to use tear gas to control the 2000-strong crowd, many of whom wore balaclavas to hide their faces.
A number of demonstrators turned up as dressed as Nazi concentration camp inmates.
Many compared European Union ministers who were in town to discuss immigration with those who collaborated with Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
The authorities in Vichy hoped that by hosting the conference 64 years after the fall of Marshall Petain’s regime they could shake off their wartime stigma.
But Xavier Renou, one of the organisers of the demonstration, said: 'We denounce the worrying evolution of European migration policies, which recall the ideas that led to deportations at the end of the 1930s.'
Ahead of the conference, Vichy’s conservative mayor Claude Malhuret, had expressed hope that the town was on the verge of escaping its grim past.
‘It's a scandal that there are 10 conferences per year in Berlin, Hitler's city, and in Moscow, Stalin's city, and no-one says a thing, while Vichy has been shunned,’ said Mr Malhuret.
He thanked Hortefeux, France's minister of immigration, integration and national identity, for organising the conference and breaking the taboo.
Officials from 27 EU member countries are holding two days of talks.
A Vichy police spokesman said: ‘There were three arrests on Monday night, with those picked up later freed.
'Cars were set on fire and shop windows vandalised. We are appealing for calm.'
