“Paris moment” for London

London has been rocked for three days now by clashes between the police and residents of a problem neighborhood in the British capital. The riots were presumably sparked by the killing of Mark Duggan, 29.

As the police wanted to search the cab with Mark sitting inside, he opened fire. Without waiting for an official explanation from the go-vernment, peaceful demonstrators went on a rampage.

The protesters were smashing and looting shops, and burnt down a double-decker and a police car. The Independent reports that more than 100 protesters were arrested and 35 policemen were injured.

From Yan LEPETUN’s viewpoint, UK-based Ukrainian journalist, London seems to be ha-ving its own “Paris moment.” “These events show that Britain’s integration policy came unstuck. There must be no illusions. Multiculturalism does not work here as smoothly as it does in, say, Canada.

The source is in the 1960s, when Britain began to receive residents of its former colonies. Until now, London has been populated, de facto, but not de jure, on a basis of segregation.

Tottenham is a neighborhood of relatively poor and predominantly non-white people with quite a high criminality rate (although it is not Sao Paulo, of course),” he says. Meanwhile, the British authorities have condemned these, what they called unexpected, riots.