The number of burning cars last night decreased compared to New Year’s Eve 2019, when 1,316 cars caught fire, according to a tweet by French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Twitter on Saturday.
The minister added that arson attacks have decreased due to the heavy police presence on the streets of cities on New Year’s Eve, and law and order and restrictions on public gatherings and the wearing of masks have been enforced, while COVID-19 infections are increasing due to the rapidly spreading mutant “Omicron”.
No information is available on the number of cars burned last year due to the nationwide lockdown in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.
Reports indicate that the practice of burning cars during New Year’s Eve began in earnest among young people – often in poor neighborhoods – in the nineties of the last century in the region around Strasbourg in eastern France.
It also became a form of protest during the raging unrest caused by youthful desperation with housing projects that swept France in the fall of 2005. At the time, police counted 8,810 cars burned in less than three weeks.
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