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| African Papers Slam France | |||
| 2005-11-12 | |||
Seen from Africa, north and south of the Sahara, the revolt of the suburbs looks like a failure: that of the integration of the second and third generations of immigrants. In the French-speaking press of the ex-colonies, one does not mince words. For the New Expression of Cameroun, France lost its republican heart by closing the door on people from abroad, those who immigrated from without as well as those born within the country. "(Given) the fact that two major incidents occurred in an almost simultaneous way, the repatriation in Morocco of those who wished to migrate to Europe and a similar destiny threatened for those youths in France who revolted, resulting (it is said moderately) from 'immigration', we see these are two sides of the same coin", writes a leader-writer of the newspaper in his editorial article: "France: Cracks in the Republic!" Moreover, he continues, "there is a connection between the difficulty of integration of the immigrant populations in these Republics who found their grandfathers and fathers useful, either as cannon fodder or as workmen taking part in the development of the car industry, and the other form of neglect which consists in condemning to clandestine immigration those who also dream of being welcomed in Ailleurs. The theory of zero tolerance of Nicolas Sarkozy (...) led France at the edge of the explosion." The Algerian daily newspaper El-Watan is just as indignant. In its pages "Discussions", a lawyer, author of Memories of immigrants, openly attacks Nicolas Sarkozy, heir according to him to a line of thinking that is colonialist and xenophobe. "As lately as yesterday, one called their parents wogs; today, one describes them as "rabble" of suburbs ... one cleaned with napalm in certain colonies; today, one wants to clean them in KÀrcher. When it comes down to it, is France really a State of rights, fatherland of the human rights and of the democracy in which the young people of the suburbs believed so much?"
The author also attacks the Right, including the ideas of the LePenists, and speaks against the attitudes of the Right about the poor. "Should one then speak about discrimination by the State? Because finally, that is what this is, when they speak of people as "rabble", many of whom live in the French suburbs? Citizens of this country, they were born there, studied there, there pay their taxes and regulate their contributions; they are citizens of this country since now several generations. Their parents in exile spent their more beautiful years to defend and help to build France of today; they are stripped of even the elementary voting rights in local elections promised so much by a Left which was disavowed since, allowing a certain group to raise once again demagogery."
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| Posted by:lotp |