Our political class and media at their lowest!
Undignified, costly and inefficient, so be it, but let’s try and avoid criminal behaviour!
According to the inner circle of the French Presidency, our dispute with Europe about the Roma people is supposed to be the result of a long thought-through strategy, and someone even quipped that European commissioner Viviane Reding had done a big favour to France! Really? Indeed the French could not value the clumsy comments of the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship; with all her political experience she really should know that you are mostly better off avoiding to manipulate without precautions the rather emotional symbols of Shoah or WWII. But – surprise! - a recent poll published by the daily “Le Parisien” shows that a majority of French think that Europe, not France, is right on this one.
Would the “Homeland of Human Rights” not accept lightly that representatives of its own police expel European citizens in spite of their legal status? Would that remind French citzens of a sinister past, when adults and children alike were deported because of their racial identity? If so, it is honourable, and it is actually all that is left of our honour. Indeed when government ministers lie blatantly to the European authorities (whose authority stems from international treaties signed by France), when top civil servants flout the Law, either by writing villainous directives or by depriving poor people from their fundamental rights, when as a result of all this, doors are kept closed for our President (who will have to reduce his official stay in New-York by three quarters), what is left? May be the honour that the courageous civic commitment of a few small groups can earn us – Christians and non-Christians groups which are ready to stick their neck out to maintain humanist values ahead of reason of state, may they be thanked for that!
Taxpayers should really protest as well. The steps taken are not only utterly lacking in dignity, they are also costly and inefficient: once return allowances and air tickets have been paid, we can only watch the poor people who were expelled come back where they hope to survive, back to square one. Is it really worthwhile turning half the planet against us for such a result?
But the expulsion frenzy of the French State doesn’t stop at rational considerations. A TV report was recently showing how those who are denied the right to asylum in France are sent back to their home situations; once their province is listed as “pacified”, Afghanis are just sent back to their death, either quick if they refuse to enlist with the Talibans to partake in Jihad, or slightly slower because if they de enlist, they will mostly be engaged in kamikaze actions. The French Government’s attitude does surprise Afghan officials who wonder aloud what NATO soldiers are doing in these “pacified” regions and ironically suggest that the French Minister of Immigration take a little discovery tour of the area. The same report also showed how the French police are trying to get asylum seekers to renounce by promising them about anything in return, like a job in their home country! One treads there boldly into criminal territory, beyond failure to assist a person in danger, very near being accessory to murder.
Alas indignity is not the problem of just one party. How can we otherwise qualify the grotty press campaign launched the last months against one government minister? A few weeks ago, an excellent documentary film by Yves Boisset was featured by the French television about the Salengro case. (Roger Salengro was the Interior Minister of the Popular Front; his integrity was widely acknowledged but at the end of 1936 he committed suicide following a long press campaign implying he had been a traitor during WWI, which a baseless calomny.) During the debate the name of former French Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy who committed suicide in 1993 came up several times although his case was rather different; he had compared himself to Roger Salengro but he looked like an honest man compromised by an utterly corrupt entourage in very real scandals. Conversely, the present campaign against Eric Woerth is strongly reminiscent of the attacks on Salengro. He is the victim of a carefully calculated firing, planned to last long and destroy without fail. The artillery is manned by a set of leftists who are obviously convinced to serve a noble political cause: to slow down or prevent the reform of pensions, exactly like Charles Maurras, Henri Béraud and Léon Daudet who were sure to serve their cause by torpedoing the Popular Front through his weakest link, Roger Salengro.
Salengro killed himself because in such defamation cases suspicion lingers on even after innocence has been proven. Is Eric Woerth innocent? It seems that remarkably little evidence of the contrary has come up after a very long and thorough research in his long past of politician. However, whatever the ultimate answer will be the method remains sordid; such a campaign, carefully calculated to harm as much as possible and why not to kill, verges on the criminal.
In the anti-Roma discrimination case as well as in the anti-Woerth campaign, one is strangely come back to the violent and reckless practices of the Thirties. The mere remembrance of what followed soon after should wake us up to a massive civic mobilisation and vigilance!
Undignified, costly and inefficient, so be it, but let’s try and avoid criminal behaviour!
According to the inner circle of the French Presidency, our dispute with Europe about the Roma people is supposed to be the result of a long thought-through strategy, and someone even quipped that European commissioner Viviane Reding had done a big favour to France! Really? Indeed the French could not value the clumsy comments of the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship; with all her political experience she really should know that you are mostly better off avoiding to manipulate without precautions the rather emotional symbols of Shoah or WWII. But – surprise! - a recent poll published by the daily “Le Parisien” shows that a majority of French think that Europe, not France, is right on this one.
Would the “Homeland of Human Rights” not accept lightly that representatives of its own police expel European citizens in spite of their legal status? Would that remind French citzens of a sinister past, when adults and children alike were deported because of their racial identity? If so, it is honourable, and it is actually all that is left of our honour. Indeed when government ministers lie blatantly to the European authorities (whose authority stems from international treaties signed by France), when top civil servants flout the Law, either by writing villainous directives or by depriving poor people from their fundamental rights, when as a result of all this, doors are kept closed for our President (who will have to reduce his official stay in New-York by three quarters), what is left? May be the honour that the courageous civic commitment of a few small groups can earn us – Christians and non-Christians groups which are ready to stick their neck out to maintain humanist values ahead of reason of state, may they be thanked for that!
Taxpayers should really protest as well. The steps taken are not only utterly lacking in dignity, they are also costly and inefficient: once return allowances and air tickets have been paid, we can only watch the poor people who were expelled come back where they hope to survive, back to square one. Is it really worthwhile turning half the planet against us for such a result?
But the expulsion frenzy of the French State doesn’t stop at rational considerations. A TV report was recently showing how those who are denied the right to asylum in France are sent back to their home situations; once their province is listed as “pacified”, Afghanis are just sent back to their death, either quick if they refuse to enlist with the Talibans to partake in Jihad, or slightly slower because if they de enlist, they will mostly be engaged in kamikaze actions. The French Government’s attitude does surprise Afghan officials who wonder aloud what NATO soldiers are doing in these “pacified” regions and ironically suggest that the French Minister of Immigration take a little discovery tour of the area. The same report also showed how the French police are trying to get asylum seekers to renounce by promising them about anything in return, like a job in their home country! One treads there boldly into criminal territory, beyond failure to assist a person in danger, very near being accessory to murder.
Alas indignity is not the problem of just one party. How can we otherwise qualify the grotty press campaign launched the last months against one government minister? A few weeks ago, an excellent documentary film by Yves Boisset was featured by the French television about the Salengro case. (Roger Salengro was the Interior Minister of the Popular Front; his integrity was widely acknowledged but at the end of 1936 he committed suicide following a long press campaign implying he had been a traitor during WWI, which a baseless calomny.) During the debate the name of former French Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy who committed suicide in 1993 came up several times although his case was rather different; he had compared himself to Roger Salengro but he looked like an honest man compromised by an utterly corrupt entourage in very real scandals. Conversely, the present campaign against Eric Woerth is strongly reminiscent of the attacks on Salengro. He is the victim of a carefully calculated firing, planned to last long and destroy without fail. The artillery is manned by a set of leftists who are obviously convinced to serve a noble political cause: to slow down or prevent the reform of pensions, exactly like Charles Maurras, Henri Béraud and Léon Daudet who were sure to serve their cause by torpedoing the Popular Front through his weakest link, Roger Salengro.
Salengro killed himself because in such defamation cases suspicion lingers on even after innocence has been proven. Is Eric Woerth innocent? It seems that remarkably little evidence of the contrary has come up after a very long and thorough research in his long past of politician. However, whatever the ultimate answer will be the method remains sordid; such a campaign, carefully calculated to harm as much as possible and why not to kill, verges on the criminal.
In the anti-Roma discrimination case as well as in the anti-Woerth campaign, one is strangely come back to the violent and reckless practices of the Thirties. The mere remembrance of what followed soon after should wake us up to a massive civic mobilisation and vigilance!
posted by Antoine Jaulmes at 4:00 AM
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