The French Baron Who Revived The Olympics Believed They Were More Than Sport – They Were A Religion Of Perfection And Peace

Perre de Coubertin

BY JEFFREY SCHOLES AND TERRY SHOEMAKER

Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, always envisioned the Games as much more than the sum of their parts. “Olympism,” as he coined it, was a new type of religion – one shorn of gods, yet transcendent all the same.

To Coubertin, honing an athlete’s body and mind for peak performance in a competition was a way of “realizing perfection.” And if the competition were nation vs. the world, held in varied host cities every four years, individual interest would be subordinated to national pride and a global synergy. Coubertin called this sport in the service of global harmony – nothing short of a new “religio athletae,” or “religion of athletics.”

Just two decades after the Games’ modern revival in 1896, Europe was torn apart by World War I, making the dangers of national rivalries all too apparent. And as Coubertin, a French baron and pacifist, wrote, “unbridled competition engenders even an atmosphere of jealousy, envy, vanity and mistrust.”

He was convinced that these baser instincts could be bridled, however, by a “regulator” that was “grandiose and strong.” Expressed through Olympism, the religion of athletics could regulate sports and national pride in a way that produced global harmony at one site every four years – a goal unachievable through politics or sectarian religion.

But the Games have seen no shortage of challenges over the past 100 years. As researchers who study religion and sport, we wonder whether Coubertin’s lofty ideal of the “religio athletae” is still in play – if it ever was.

Ancient inspiration

Coubertin’s desire to resurrect the Olympic Games after 1,500 years of dormancy was prompted by his concerns about challenges and changes in the early 20th century. He believed, for example, that industrialization was rendering young men physically and morally weak.

Meanwhile, with the rising explanatory power of science, traditional religion was relied on less and less as a panacea for the world’s ills. A new world was dawning, and he hoped Olympism would act as a corrective. A rather obsessed aficionado of ancient Greece since childhood, Coubertin saw the ancient Games as containing ingredients that, if modernized, could uniquely respond to some of the big problems of his day.

Specifically, he looked back to the ancient Greek ideal of mind and body in harmony, which competitors expressed every four years in the Greek town of Olympia, the sanctuary for Zeus. The Games were open to Greek men – women and enslaved people could not participate – and matches could be brutally fierce.

By making this ideal the foundation of the modern Games, Coubertin hoped to infuse them with a sense of balance, proportion and reverence. The Olympics would bring enchantment from ancient Greece into the 20th century – symbolized, to this day, by the relay of the torch from Olympia to the opening ceremony.

Not all of his attitudes about the ancient Games were glowing. Coubertin also believed they had been “chaotic,” “impractical and bothersome,” as well as prone to excess and corruption. He worried that the modern Olympics could end up similarly.

At the same time, he had faith that the spirit of the Games could be a “regulator” on the kinds of excessive behavior that sports can invite. At ancient Olympia, Coubertin wrote, “vulgar competition was transformed and in a sense sanctified” out of respect for bodies and minds working toward the perfection represented in the gods.

The Games today

The International Olympic Committee has repeated Coubertin’s desires of forging unity and peace through athleticism. Current IOC President Thomas Bach said, “The shared goal of the U.N. and the IOC is to make the world a better and more peaceful place. For the IOC, this means putting sport at the service of the peaceful development of humanity.”

Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to think of another event, other than sports, that brings together as many countries from all over the world to compete under the same rules without the threat of violence.

Every two years billions of people experience this welling of both national and global pride, as the five interlocking, multicolored Olympic rings are meant to symbolize. And while the Greek gods – or any god, for that matter – are not featured, a kind of civil religion still binds athletes and spectators to the “global congregation” that the Olympics is designed to generate.

What Coubertin could not foresee was the role that money and politics would play – hearkening back to the “vulgar competition” that he believed had undermined the ancient Games. Cities vying to host the Olympics often launch projects that damage the environment and local neighborhoods, and countries have been accused of “sportswashing”: using the feel-good publicity of sports to distract from a deplorable human rights record. For example, the Nazi government famously used the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a showcase for its racial theory of ethnic German superiority.

In other words, the Olympics have been a vehicle for both unethical behavior and international antagonism – in clear violation of Coubertin’s vision.

Perhaps Olympism was always a pipe dream; perhaps sport never possessed the power to craft and sustain a “religio athletae.” We would argue that the episodic rise of healthy national pride and largely unknown amateur athletes is still something for which to admire the Olympics. Yet it’s unclear how the good of the Games can generate an inspiring new “regulator” that transcends individual performance and national medal counts – or whether it’s even possible.

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More Global Confidence In Biden Than Trump Even As Views Of US democracy Decline, Poll Finds

French President Emmanuel Macron , right, and President Joe Biden toast during a state dinner, June 8, 2024 at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Ivan Vucci, File)

BY NICHOLAS RICCARDI

People in 34 countries around the world have more confidence in President Joe Biden than his challenger in November’s election, former President Donald Trump, even as there is increased skepticism that United States democracy provides a good model for the rest of the world to follow, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center released Tuesday.

The poll found a median of 43% in the surveyed countries say they trust Biden to do the right thing in world affairs compared to 28% for Trump. People had a more positive assessment of Biden than Trump in 24 countries, while Trump led in Hungary and Tunisia and the two men were effectively tied in eight other countries.

The greater confidence in Biden comes as faith in U.S. democracy is waning. While a median of 54% in the 34 countries polled have positive views of the U.S., a median of 4 in 10 across the surveyed nations told the pollsters that its democracy used to be a good example for other countries to follow but no longer is.

A median of 21% said U.S. democracy remains a good example for other nations, while an almost identical share, 22%, said it never has been. Since the spring of 2021, the only other time Pew asked the question, the share of those who believe U.S. democracy is a good example has fallen in eight countries, mostly in Europe.

“People just don’t see the U.S. political system as functioning very well,” said Richard Wike, director of global attitudes research for Pew. “People see the U.S. as really divided along partisan lines.”
Read the latest: Follow AP’s complete coverage of this year’s election.

There is far less of a global divide between Trump and Biden. Confidence in the current president to do the right thing in world affairs has dropped since his first year in office but remains well above that of his rival, who had relatively low global ratings during his own presidency. Biden’s lowest confidence ratings were over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, with a median of 57% saying they had no confidence in it.

A median of 39% in the surveyed countries said they approved of Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, with his highest ratings in European nations. And a median of about four in 10 were confident in his handling of China.

Of the five leaders rated in the survey, French President Emmanuel Macron registered the highest level of confidence, just ahead of Biden, while Russian President Vladimir Putin received the lowest.

While confidence in Biden has dwindled in countries ranging from South Africa to Israel to the U.K., it remains steadily higher than that in Trump. The former president received his poorest assessments in Europe — where those expressing no confidence in him included more than eight in 10 adults in France, Germany and Sweden — and Latin America.

Africa, which Wike said tends to have positive views of U.S. presidents, registered some of Trump’s best numbers. Even in the two countries where more confidence was expressed in Trump than Biden, they were down on the former president. In Tunisia, for example, only 17% expressed confidence in him.

Hungary is the other country where adults report higher confidence in Trump than Biden, but even there it’s far from a ringing endorsement. Trump has embraced Hungary and its autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, but only 37% in Hungary say they’re confident in him, compared to 24% for Biden.

The median level of confidence in Trump’s ability to do the right thing in world affairs was only slightly higher across the 34 countries than it was for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

France’s Headscarf Ban In The 2024 Summer Olympics Reflects A Narrow View Of National Identity, Writes A Scholar Of European Studies

Basketball player Diaba Konate in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane, Wash. Steph Chambers/Getty Images

BY ARMIN LANGER

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN 

STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have sparked a discussion about whether female Muslim athletes who wear a headscarf should be allowed to compete.

In September 2023, the International Olympic Committee, upholding freedom of religious and cultural expression for all athletes, announced that athletes participating in the 2024 Paris Games can wear a hijab without any restriction.

French athletes, however, are bound by France’s strict separation of religion from the state, called laïcité. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said that French athletes would be barred from wearing a hijab during the Paris games to respect this commitment to the principle of laïcité.

Human rights organizations argued that such a ban infringes upon the religious freedoms of Muslim athletes, perpetuating discrimination and marginalization. The United Nations human rights office stated that “no one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear.”

This debate highlights the conflict between laïcité and the right to express one’s religious beliefs. As a scholar of European studies, I know about laïcité’s impact on sports, politics and society in general. In my view, laïcité, which historically upheld individual rights and freedoms, increasingly denies minority rights today, as seen in the ban on French athletes wearing hijabs at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Laïcité yesterday and today

Before the 1789 revolution, France was an absolute monarchy, where religion and the state were deeply intertwined.

The close relationship between the French monarchy and the Catholic Church began when King Charlemagne was crowned by the pope in 800 A.D. Over the centuries, the church became very powerful, owning land and controlling education and health care. It formed strong political alliances, with many nobles holding top positions within the church.

After the French Revolution succeeded and the monarchy was abolished, the revolutionaries still resented religion for its long relationship with the crown. They saw the church as a source of unfairness in society and wanted to reduce religion’s influence in public life and push their ideas of freedom, fairness and unity.

They nationalized church properties and introduced secularism to create a separation between religious and governmental affairs. Since then, France has maintained laïcité as one of the republic’s core values.

The evolution of laïcité in France coincides with significant demographic shifts in the latter half of the 20th century. As France transformed into a diverse nation with various religions and ethnicities, including a significant Muslim population, the interpretation and application of laïcité faced new challenges. With millions migrating from former French colonies in northern and western Africa in search of economic opportunities, France now hosts the largest Muslim community in Europe, comprising about 10% of its population. This demographic change has sparked debates about the role of religion in public life and the extent to which laïcité should accommodate religious diversity.

While laïcité was originally introduced alongside principles such as freedom and equality, as times changed, so did its meaning. Initially, laïcité meant keeping religion separate from the state. Lately, however, it is often interpreted to mean that citizens should refrain from showing their religious identities in public.

This shift has led to bans on religious symbols in public schools and spaces, disproportionately affecting Muslim women who wear veils.

A debate about the Olympics – and beyond

Activists and scholars have argued that today’s laïcité poses a threat to both human rights and religious freedom. In their view, it promotes a narrow view of republican values and national identity, rejecting diversity and unfairly targeting Muslim women who wear headscarves.

Laïcité can be seen as discriminatory because it often treats Christian customs as just part of everyday culture, while it treats visible signs of other religions, such as the hijab worn by some Muslim women, as unacceptable. This means Christian symbols and traditions are more easily accepted, but non-Christian ones are often not allowed.

It is also important to note that Christian traditions focus mostly on beliefs, which are private, while Islamic and Jewish traditions emphasize practices, such as wearing headscarves, that are visible. This means laïcité affects people differently, often more strictly targeting visible signs of non-Christian religion.

A 2023 survey showed that almost 80% of French Muslims believed that their country’s secular laws are discriminatory. Research shows that laïcité disproportionately affects Muslim girls from marginalized communities, perpetuating social inequalities. For example, the ban on headscarves in schools forces Muslim girls to choose between their education and their religious beliefs, leading to feelings of exclusion and isolation. This policy can also hinder their academic performance and personal development, limiting their future opportunities.

Banning hijab for players

French Muslim athletes have faced challenges on the field for a long time. For example, in 2023, the French Soccer Federation decided not to adjust meal and practice timings during Ramadan, even though it occurred during a break when there was no competition.

This decision effectively prevented Muslim players from fasting and led to notable departures, such as Lyon midfielder Mahamadou Diawara leaving the France under-19s camp. Other French players, too, left French professional sports. Basketball player Diaba Konate also opted to pursue her career in the United States because of the French ban on wearing the hijab.

In 2004, France prohibited religious symbols in public schools, including the hijab, Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans and large Christian crosses.

The nonprofit Human Rights Watch criticized it as an unjustified restriction on religious practice. In 2010, France extended the ban to face-covering headgear in public places, including the burqa and niqab, which are garments worn by some Muslim women that cover the face and body. Last year, France banned the abaya in schools.

A ban on cultural pluralism?

The hijab debate extends beyond the realm of sports, touching upon broader issues of identity and belonging in multicultural societies. For many Muslim women, the hijab is not just clothing – it is an expression of religious identity and empowerment.

Banning it from the Olympics could be seen as limiting their freedom of expression and denying their right to fully engage in society while staying true to their religious and cultural backgrounds.

France’s ban on religious symbols in official sports activities highlights the struggle to balance religious freedom with national values. This becomes especially complicated in the Olympics, where athletes’ individual expressions clash with their roles as representatives of their countries.

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A Rwandan Doctor In France Faces 30 Years In Prison For Alleged Role In His Country’s 1994 Genocide

Sosthene Munyemana, a Rwandan doctor arrives at Paris court house, Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023 over his alleged role over the 1994 genocide in his own country...( AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

BY SYLVIE CORBET

PARIS (AP) — A French court is expected to rule Tuesday on charges against a Rwandan doctor for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide in his home country. Prosecutors have requested a sentence of 30 years in prison.

Sosthene Munyemana, 68, faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and complicity in such crimes. Munyemana, who moved to France months after the genocide and quickly raised suspicions among Rwandans living there, has denied wrongdoing.

Nearly three decades have passed since the genocide in which more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them were killed.

Advocate General Sophie Havard, one of the prosecutors, called on the court to find Munyemana guilty so “crimes against humanity don’t remain crimes without a criminal, a genocide without a perpetrator.”

At the time, Munyemana was a 38-year-old gynecologist in Tumba in the southern university district of Butare.

He is accused of co-signing in April 1994 “a motion of support” for the interim government that supervised the genocide and of participating in a local committee and meetings that organized roundups of Tutsi civilians.

The motion of support, broadcast on Radio Rwanda, was a way of “backing future massacres” in the area, prosecutors argued.

Munyemana was a friend of Jean Kambanda, head of the interim government.

Munyemana acknowledged participating in local night patrols which were organized to track Tutsi people, but he said he did it to protect the local population. Witnesses saw him at checkpoints set up across the town where he supervised operations, according to prosecutors.

Munyemana is also accused of detaining several dozen Tutsi civilians in the office of the local administration that was “under his authority at the time” and of relaying “instructions from the authorities to the local militia and residents leading to the roundup of the Tutsis,” among other things.

Prosecutors said there is evidence of “intentional gathering meant to exterminate people” and that Munyemana “couldn’t ignore” they were to be killed.

Only one survivor has been found among those detained under Munyemana’s alleged supervision. Most victims, some injured but still alive, were buried in holes initially dug for feces. Many corpses still haven’t been found.

Munyemana has denied participating in the genocide and said he wasn’t aware of the preparations for the mass killing. He said he believed people locked in the office would be taken away to be protected from armed militias.

He arrived in September 1994 in France, where he has been living and working until he recently retired. Members of the Rwandan community in France first filed a complaint against Munyemana in 1995.

In recent years, as relations improved with a Rwandan government that has long accused France of “enabling” the genocide, France has increased efforts to arrest genocide suspects and send them to trial.

This is the sixth case related to the Rwandan genocide that is coming to court in Paris, all of them in the past decade. Like previous ones, the trial has been made difficult by time and distance. French police and judicial authorities acknowledged that almost no physical evidence was left.

The investigation included hearing over 200 witnesses and 12 trips to Rwanda as well as judicial cooperation with Canada, Austria, Norway and Switzerland. Dozens testified during the trial, some coming from Rwanda, others speaking via videoconference from Kigali, including from prison.

Amid those attending the trial every day was Dafroza Gauthier, a Rwandan who said she lost more than 80 members of her family in the mass killing. She and her husband, Alain, have dedicated their lives to seeking the prosecution of alleged perpetrators of the genocide, founding the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda in 2001.

Last year, Laurent Bucyibaruta was sentenced by a Paris court to 20 years in prison for complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity, making him the highest-ranking Rwandan to be convicted in France on such charges. He appealed.

Liberian President George Weah Seeks A Second Term In A Rematch With His Main Challenger From 2017

Liberia President George Weah arrives to attend the Paris Peace Forum in Paris, France, Nov. 11, 2021...(AP Photo/Chrostophe Ena, File)

BY MARK N. MENGONFIA AND CHINEDU ASADU

MONROVIA, LIBERIA (AP) — Liberian President George Weah is seeking a second term in office Tuesday, hoping that his efforts to pave roads, build hospitals and bring electricity to more areas will win votes despite growing economic hardships in the West African nation.

He faces a crowded field of 19 challengers, led by his main rival from the last election in 2017, Joseph Boakai, who served as vice president under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female leader.

Weah, 57, a former international soccer star, cast his ballot with his wife and son at an elementary school in Paynesville city.

“Liberians are exercising their democracy rights. ... It is the Liberian people’s election and they will decide who becomes their president,” he said.

Boakai has campaigned on promises to rescue Liberia from what he calls Weah’s failed leadership, dubbing himself and his running mate “Rescue 1” and “Rescue 2.”

“We are all excited and optimistic about what is now a national call to rally citizens of this great country for a rescue mission to reverse the hardships so many Liberians and their families have been subjected to,” Boakai said during a recent stop at the Antoinette Tubman Stadium.

Weah has been accused of not living up to key campaign promises that he would fight corruption and ensure justice for victims of the country’s brutal back-to-back civil wars that killed an estimated 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003.

He obtained 61.5% of the total votes cast in 2017, while Boakai received 38.5% though it remains to be seen whether the incumbent can coast to a similar victory this time. Liberia’s 2.47 million eligible voters are also casting ballots for legislative elections Tuesday.

“Weah’s political position going into the vote is not assessed as being stronger than it was in 2017, given the mixed performance during his first tenure,” said Zoe McCathie, a political and security analyst at Africa-focused Signal Risk Consulting. “While some policies such as free higher education for public universities have proven popular, Weah has largely failed to effectively combat corruption and improve the economy, as he had promised when first elected, causing some support to wane.”

Already election-related violence has claimed two lives in Foya, located in Lofa county. Ruling party and opposition candidates have blamed each other for the Sept. 29 clashes.

Liberia began as a settlement for freed slaves from the United States in 1822, but declared itself an independent nation 25 years later. Liberia’s flag, constitution, form of government and many laws are modeled on those of the U.S. The capital is named in honor of America’s fifth president, James Monroe, who was in power when the freed slaves were repatriated.

Weah rode into power six years ago in the first democratic transfer of power in the West African nation since the end of the civil wars amid high hopes brought by his promise to fight poverty and stir infrastructural development in Africa’s oldest republic. His goal, he had said in 2017, was to push Liberia from a low-income country to a middle-income one.

But his government is perceived by many to have performed below expectations, especially in the management of the economy, which contracted in two of the six years he has been in office, with the rate of economic growth in decline since 2021.

It’s been “turmoil”, to create business, said Seah J. Trustmo, a voter. “It has been hard, very, very hard,” she said.

Corruption continues to stifle Liberia’s growth and many people will look to use the vote to show their concerns, analysts say. Research network Afrobarometer’s 2023 surveys found that large numbers of Liberians say corruption in the country has increased during the past year and the government is doing a poor job of fighting it.

In a country where at least one in two citizens are in poverty according to multiple measures, Weah faces accusations of mismanaging government funds. Between November and December last year, he was out of the country for seven weeks touring several countries, including Qatar where he watched his son play in the U.S. football team at the World Cup.

Protests have also been rampant under Weah and analysts have raised concerns about the likelihood of another round of demonstrations if the electoral process is flawed. While the campaigns have been largely peaceful, there have been pockets of violence — including this week when violent clashes between opposition and ruling parties’ supporters marred the close of Weah’s campaign rally.

“This popular dissatisfaction (of the government’s performance) will likely be utilized by opposition parties to renew demonstrations in the event of a victory for Weah,” Signal Risk’s McCathie said, before pointing out that political violence following the election is, however, unlikely to pose any risk to Liberia’s political stability.

Weah is still the only African to have won the Ballon d’Or. He played as a forward for Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea and Manchester City during an 18-year club career. His final appearance for Liberia was in September 2018 when he made a surprise appearance in an exhibition game against Nigeria at the age of 51, a year after he’d been elected president. His 23-year-old son, Tim, now plays for Serie A club Juventus and the U.S. national team.

Asadu reported from Lagos, Nigeria. Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, contributed.

French Ambassador Stays In Niger, Defying Junta, As Macron Defends French Policy

French President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he holds his annual foreign policy speech in front of French ambassadors at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Monday, August 28, 2023. (Teresa Suarez, Pool via AP) 

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France’s ambassador is staying at his post in Niger despite being asked to leave by the ruling junta, speaking out firmly against the coup leaders while insisting that France is not Niger’s enemy.

Since ousting Niger’s democratically elected president a month ago, the junta has been exploiting grievances among the population toward former colonial ruler France, and has turned to Russian mercenary group Wagner for help.

Macron dismissed concerns that standing up to the junta could be dangerous.

“Our policy is the right one. It depends on the courage of President Mohamed Bazoum, the commitment of our diplomats, of our ambassador on the ground who is remaining despite pressure,” Macron told a gathering of French ambassadors in Paris.

French Ambassador Sylvain Itte was asked to leave Niger within 48 hours in a letter Friday from the Nigerien Foreign Ministry that accused him of ignoring an invitation for a meeting with the ministry. The letter also cited “actions of the French government contrary to the interests of Niger.”

France has consistently acknowledged only the authority of Bazoum. He is still detained by the junta, which is now under sanctions by Western and regional African powers.

“One shouldn’t give in to the narrative used by the coup leaders that consists of saying France has become our enemy,” Macron said Monday.

’’The problem of Nigeriens today is the coup leaders who put them in danger because they are abandoning the fight against terrorism, because they are abandoning a policy that was economically good for (the population) and they are in the process of losing international funding that was helping them emerge from poverty.”

France has about 1,500 troops in Niger helping local forces fight Islamic extremists. The military cooperation has been suspended since the coup, whose leaders say Bazoum’s government wasn’t doing enough to protect the country.

‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ For All? New Riots Make France Confront An Old Problem

FILE - Youths smash a window after a march for Nahel, Thursday, June 29, 2023 in Nanterre, outside Paris. The killing of 17-year-old Nahel during a traffic check Tuesday, captured on video, shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between young people and police in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods around France. After more than 3,400 arrests and signs that the violence is now abating, France is once again facing a reckoning (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

BY JOHN LEICESTER

PARIS, FRANCE (AP) — “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: The lofty ideals to which France has long aspired are embossed on coins and carved above school doors across the land. Yet they are the polar opposite of what some French people who are Black or brown saw in a shocking video of a police officer shooting and killing a 17-year-old delivery driver of north African descent during a traffic stop.

That kid, some said to themselves, could have been me — or my children, or my friends. Within hours, the first fires of anger and revenge were lighting up the night skies of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teenager, Nahel, was declared dead at 9:15 a.m. last Tuesday. His left arm and chest had been pierced from left to right by a single shot fired before the yellow Mercedes he was driving then slammed into barriers on Nelson Mandela Square.

From the town on the fringe of the French capital’s high-rise business district, with its disadvantaged housing projects, glaring wealth gaps, and melting-pot mix of races and cultural influences imported from France’s former colonies, the flames of fury quickly spread.

More than 200 cities and towns reported arson attacks on public buildings, vehicle fires, clashes with police, looting and other mayhem in six nights of unrest. The violence was nationwide — from blue-collar ports on France’s northern coast to southern towns overlooking the Pyrenees, from de-industrialized former mining basins to Nantes and La Rochelle on the western Atlantic coast, once hearts of the French slave trade.

After more than 3,400 arrests and signs that the violence is now abating, France is once again facing a reckoning — as it did after previous riots in mixed-race, disadvantaged neighborhoods in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

And the uncomfortable central question remains the same: What is France doing wrong that prevents chunks of its population, particularly among non-whites, from being able to buy into its promise of equality and fraternity for all?

THE PROBLEMS ARE BOTH OLD AND NEW

Among the factors being blamed and hotly disputed are problems both old and new: racism in police ranks and French society more broadly, poverty made more desperate by rising costs related to the war in Ukraine, decades of urban neglect, breakdowns in marriages and parental authority, and the ripples of the COVID-19 pandemic. Young teenagers whose schooling was interrupted by virus curfews and teaching shutdowns were among those smashing, burning, stealing and fighting with police — and reveling in the mayhem on social media.

For Yazid Kherfi, who spends his time driving from one housing project to the next, speaking to young people about how to avoid the route that he took into crime and prison, the violence was a cry of distress from a generation he says feels unloved and left by the wayside.

The minivan Kherfi uses has a quote from Martin Luther King painted on the back: “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.” But on his rounds, Kherfi says he frequently hears young people complain that police single them out because of their color.

“The police aren’t well trained to work in difficult neighborhoods. Some police are racist. There are violent police. They exist. I’m not saying all the police but it’s still a certain number,” he says. “Blacks and Arabs are stopped far more frequently than whites.”

“We are a long way from liberty, equality, fraternity,” he adds. “The reality is that people find all these situations very, very hard. It’s been like this for more than 40 years. So of course, every time there are riots in France, it’s linked to a young person’s death related to a policing operation. And the police rarely blames itself.”

From French President Emmanuel Macron down, government officials were quick to condemn the actions of the officer now incarcerated on a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Macron called the shooting “inexplicable and inexcusable.” The officer’s lawyer says his client feared, when the vehicle they’d stopped started moving again, that he and his colleague would be dragged along with it and crushed.

HOW TO TACKLE RACISM WHEN IT CAN’T BE MEASURED?

Measuring the scale of racism and racial inequality in France is complicated by its official policy of color blindness, with strict limits on data that can be collected. For critics, that guiding philosophy has made the state oblivious to discrimination. France’s census has no questions about race or ethnicity.

Still, inequalities are too glaring to be ignored. The government’s statistics agency found in 2020 that death rates among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doubled in France and tripled in the Paris region at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — an acknowledgement of the virus’s punishing and disproportionate impact on Black immigrants and members of other systemically overlooked minority groups. Other research has also exposed racism in workplaces and hiring.

“For 40, 45 years there have been warning signs about discrimination,” says Abel Boyi, head of a group called “All Unique, All United” that aims to reconcile young people with France and its republican values.

Boyi, who is Black, decries the state’s colorblindness as “a French hypocrisy.” He says he regularly encounters young people of color and also white people from disadvantaged neighborhoods who apply for dozens of jobs but aren’t hired “because the family name sounds foreign, because the address isn’t a good one.”

“Unfortunately, when there’s an injustice, there’s always a radical fringe that tips into violence. We saw these young people, aged 12 to 19 ... at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning burning cars, stoning police officers, stoning buses. It’s terrible,” Boyi says. “The anger is righteous but the method is wrong.”

THE VISUALS ADDED FUEL TO THE FLAMES

The video of Nahel’s death also helps explains the rapid spread and sudden intensity of the violence. As was also the case with the footage of George Floyd’s killing in the United States, the images left some people wondering whether police abuses sometimes go unpunished because they aren’t captured on camera. Spray-painted graffiti in Nanterre read: “Without video, Nahel would be a statistic.”

Police officer Walid Hrar says, however, that the relationship between France’s forces of law and order and disadvantaged neighborhoods he works in isn’t as broken as the rioting made it seem.

He runs a volunteer group of officers, The Guardians of Fraternity, who meet with neighborhood kids to try to build understanding and help them see that behind their uniforms, they are people, too. “Sometimes, the talks are very hard, very stormy,” he acknowledges.

But Hrar, who is of Moroccan descent and Muslim, says the police force has “changed enormously” and become more diverse since he joined up.

That was in 2004. France was swept by rioting the following year. He has spent his career in Paris’ northern suburbs where that violence first erupted, when 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.

One difference between then and now, Hrar says, is that the new generation of rioters seems to know no limits, trashing schools, town halls, police stations and other symbols of authority.

“With some, the breakdown is total, that is true,” Hrar says. “There is real groundwork that needs to be done.”

Another key difference: social networks. This generation weaned on TikTok and Snapchat not only celebrated mayhem in short videos but, the government says, sometimes organized on their networks, too. Memes and hashtags about looting quickly swamped references about justice for Nahel. Macron said some rioters seemed to be acting out “the video games that have intoxicated them.”

It all adds up to something toxic and dangerous, with deep cracks in the foundations of a country still unreconciled with its often violent colonial past and with engrained discrimination and inequalities that defy quick fixes.

“How do we bring together the multitude of histories into one common history that concerns us all, regardless of skin color and origin?” said Boyi. “That is France’s great challenge for the 21st century.”

Paris chief correspondent John Leicester has reported from France for The Associated Press since 2002.

World’s Workers Rally For Economic Justice On May Day

Smoke billows on Place de la Nation after radicals set two fuel cans on fire during a demonstration Monday in Paris. Thibault Camus/Associated Press

BY ALEX TURNBULL, ANGELA CHARLTON AND HYUNG-JIN KIM

PARIS (AP) — People squeezed by inflation and demanding economic justice took to streets across Asia, Europe and the Americas on Monday to mark May Day, in an outpouring of worker discontent not seen since before the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns.

French police charged at radical protesters and troublemakers smashing bank and shop windows and setting fires as unions pushed the president to scrap a higher retirement age. South Koreans pleaded for higher wages as did others around Latin America. Spanish lawyers demanded the right to take days off. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon marched in a country plunged into economic crisis.

While May Day is marked worldwide as a celebration of labor rights, this year’s rallies tapped into broader frustrations. Climate activists spray-painted a museum in Paris, and protesters in Germany demonstrated against violence targeting women and LGBTQ+ people.

Celebrations were forced indoors in Pakistan, tinged with political tensions as in Turkey, as both countries face high-stakes elections. Russia’s war in Ukraine overshadowed scaled-back events in Moscow, where Communist-led May Day celebrations were once massive affairs.

Across the globe, this year’s May Day events unleashed pent-up frustration after three years of COVID-19 restrictions.

Across France, some 800,000 people marched, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. They mobilized against President Emmanuel Macron’s recent move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Organizers see pension reform as a threat to hard-fought worker rights, while Macron argues it’s economically necessary as the population ages.

While marchers were largely peaceful, violence by radicals, an ever-present reality at French marches, marred the message, notably in Paris. A Paris police officer was seriously injured by a Molotov cocktail, among 108 officers injured around France, Darmanin said. It wasn’t known how many protesters were potentially injured. Clashes also marked protests in Lyon and Nantes.

“Violence is increasingly strong in a society that is radicalizing,” the interior minister said on BFM-TV news station, blaming the ultra-left. He said some 2,000 radicals were at the Paris march.

Tear gas hung over the end point of the Paris march, Place de la Nation, where a huge black cloud lofted high above the trees after radicals set two fuel cans afire outside a building renovation site, police said.

French union members were joined by groups fighting for economic justice, or just expressing anger at what is seen as Macron’s out-of-touch, pro-business leadership. Labor activists from abroad were present, among them Hyrwon Chong of the South Korean Metal Workers’ Union.

“Today we see rising inequality throughout the world, terrible inflation,” she said, adding that Macron’s government was trying “to tear down a pillar of the social system which is the pension system.”

In Northern Macedonia’s capital Skopje, thousands of trade union members protested a recent government decision granting ministers a 78% raise. The minimum monthly wage in one of Europe’s poorest countries, is 320 euros ($350), while the hike will put ministers’ wages at around 2,300 euros ($2,530). “We are here, not only (to mark) Labor Day, but also to warn that if there is no social justice, there will be no social peace either,” said union leader Jakim Nedelkovski.

In Turkey, police prevented demonstrators from reaching Istanbul’s main square, Taksim, and detained around a dozen of them, independent television station Sozcu reported.

The square has symbolic importance for Turkey’s trade unions after unknown gunmen opened fire on a May Day celebration at Taksim in 1977, causing a stampede that killed dozens. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has declared Taksim off-limits to protests, though small groups were allowed to enter to lay wreaths at a monument.

In Pakistan, authorities banned rallies in some cities because of a tense security and political atmosphere. In Peshawar, in the restive northwest, labor organizations and trade unions held indoor events to demand better workers’ rights amid high inflation.

Sri Lanka’s opposition political parties and trade unions held workers’ day rallies protesting austerity measures and economic reforms linked to a bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Protesters demanded the government halt moves to privatize state-owned and semi-government businesses. Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in history and has suspended foreign debt repayments.

In South Korea, tens of thousands of people attended rallies in its biggest May Day gatherings since the pandemic began in early 2020.

“The price of everything has increased except for our wages. Increase our minimum wages!” an activist at a Seoul rally shouted at the podium.

In Tokyo, thousands of labor union members, opposition lawmakers and academics demanded wage increases to offset the impact of rising costs as they recover from damage from the pandemic. They criticized Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to double the defense budget, saying the money should be spent on welfare, social security and improving people’s daily lives.

In Indonesia, demonstrators demanded the government repeal a job creation law they argue would only benefit business.

In Taiwan, thousands of workers protested what they call the inadequacies of the self-ruled island’s labor policies, putting pressure on the ruling party before the 2024 presidential election.

Protests in Germany kicked off with a “Take Back the Night” rally organized by feminist and queer groups on the eve of May Day to protest against violence directed at women and LGBTQ+ people. On Monday, thousands more turned out in marches organized by Germany labor unions in Berlin, Cologne and other cities, rejecting recent calls by conservative politicians for restrictions on the right to strike.

More than 70 marches were held across Spain, and powerful unions warned of “social conflict” if low salaries compared to the EU average don’t rise in line with inflation. The Illustrious College of Lawyers of Madrid urged reforms of historic laws that require them to be on call 365 days of the year, regardless of the death of family members or medical emergencies. In recent years, lawyers have tweeted images of themselves working from hospital beds on IV drips to illustrate their plight.

Italy’s far-right premier, Giorgia Meloni, made a point of working on Monday – as her Cabinet passed measures on Labor Day that it contends demonstrates concern for workers. But opposition lawmakers and union leaders said the measures do nothing to increase salaries or combat the widespread practice of hiring workers on temporary contracts. Many young people say they can’t contemplate starting families or even move out of parents’ homes because they only get temporary contracts.

In war-ravaged Ukraine, May Day is associated with Soviet-era celebrations when the country was ruled from Moscow – an era that many want forgotten.

“It is good that we don’t celebrate this holiday like it was done during the Bolshevik times. It was something truly awful,” said Anatolii Borsiuk, a 77-year-old in Kyiv.

Alla Liapkina described the flowers and balloons of Soviet May Day gatherings, but said it’s time to move on. “We live in a new era,” she said. ‘’We don’t need to go back to such a past.”

In Venezuela, which has suffered rampant inflation for years, thousands of workers demonstrated to demand a minimum wage increase at a time when the majority cannot meet basic needs despite their last increase 14 months ago. “Decent wages and pensions now!” protesters chanted in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Many also alluded to U.S. sanctions against the socialist-led government of Nicolás Maduro, chanting, “This is not a blockade, this is looting.”

In Bolivia, leftist President Luis Arce led a Labor Day march in La Paz with a major union and announced a 5% increase in the minimum wage. Arce said his government “is strong because the unions are strong.”

In Brazil, the focus was not only on traditional labor unions but on parttime workers and those in the informal sector, with the government of new leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing a work group on proposals to regulate that sector after the president recently described those workers as “almost like slaves.”

The Other Russia-West War: Why Some African Countries Are Abandoning Paris, Joining Moscow

DISSIDENT VOICE

BY RAMZY BAROUD

The moment that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted by his own former military colleague, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pro-coup crowds filled the streets. Some burned French flags, others carried Russian flags. This scene alone represents the current tussle underway throughout the African continent.

A few years ago, the discussion regarding the geopolitical shifts in Africa was not exactly concerned with France and

Russia per se. It focused mostly on China’s growing economic role and political partnerships on the African continent. For example, Beijing’s decision to establish its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 signaled China’s major geopolitical move, by translating its economic influence in the region to political influence, backed by military presence.

China remains committed to its Africa strategy. Beijing has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 12 years, consecutively, with total bilateral trade between China and Africa, in 2021, reaching $254.3 billion, according to recent data released by the General Administration of Customs of China.

The United States, along with its western allies, have been aware of, and warning against China’s growing clout in Africa. The establishment of US AFRICOM in 2007 was rightly understood to be a countering measure to China’s influence. Since then, and arguably before, talks of a new ‘Scramble for Africa’ abounded, with new players, including China, Russia, even Turkiye, entering the fray.

The Russia-Ukraine war, however, has altered geopolitical dynamics in Africa, as it highlighted the Russian-French rivalry on the continent, as opposed to the Chinese-American competition there.

Though Russia has been present in African politics for years, the war – thus the need for stable allies at the United Nations and elsewhere – accelerated Moscow’s charm offensive. In July, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, fortifying Russia’s diplomatic relations with African leaders.

“We know that the African colleagues do not approve of the undisguised attempts of the US and their European satellites .. to impose a unipolar world order to the international community,” Lavrov said. His words were met with agreement.

Russian efforts have been paying dividends, as early as the first votes to condemn Moscow at the United Nations General Assembly, in March and April. Many African nations remained either neutral or voted against measures targeting Russia at the UN.

South Africa’s position, in particular, was problematic from Washington’s perspective, not only because of the size of the country’s economy, but also because of Pretoria’s political influence and moral authority throughout Africa. Moreover, South Africa is the only African member of the G20.

In his visit to the US in September, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa defended his country’s neutrality and raised objections to a draft US bill – the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act – that is set to monitor and punish African governments who do not conform to the American line in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The West fails to understand, however, that Africa’s slow, but determined shift toward Moscow is not haphazard or accidental.

The history of the continent’s past and current struggle against western colonialism and neocolonialism is well-known. While the West continues to define its relationship with Africa based on exploitation, Russia is constantly reminding African countries of the Soviet’s legacy on the continent. This is not only apparent in official political discourses by Russian leaders and diplomats, but also in Russian media coverage, which is prioritizing Africa and reminding African nations of their historic solidarity with Moscow.

Burning French flags and raising Russian ones, however, cannot simply be blamed on Russian supposed economic bribes, clever diplomacy or growing military influence. The readiness of African nations – Mali, Central African Republic and, now, possibly, Burkina Faso – has much more to do with mistrust and resentment of France’s self-serving legacy in Africa, West Africa in particular.

France has military bases in many parts of Africa and remains an active participant in various military conflicts, which has earned it the reputation of being the continent’s main destabilizing force. Equally important is Paris’s stronghold over the economies of 14 African countries, which are forced to use French currency, the CFA franc and, according to Frederic Ange Toure, writing in Le Journal de l’Afrique, to “centralize 50% of their reserves in the French public treasury”.

Though many African countries remain neutral in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, a massive geopolitical shift is underway, especially in militarily fragile, impoverished and politically unstable countries that are eager to seek alternatives to French and other western powers. For a country like Mali, shifting allegiances from Paris to Moscow was not exactly a great gamble. Bamako had very little to lose, but much to gain. The same logic applies to other African countries that are fighting extreme poverty, political instability and the threat of militancy, all of which are intrinsically linked.

Though China remains a powerful newcomer to Africa – a reality that continues to frustrate US policymakers – the more urgent battle, for now, is between Russia and France – the latter experiencing a palpable retreat.

In a speech last July, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted a “rethink of all our (military) postures on the African continent.” France’s military and foreign policy shift in Africa, however, was not compelled by strategy or vision, but by changing realities over which France has little control.

French Writer Annie Ernaux Awarded Nobel Prize In Literature

BY JEFFREY SCHAEFFER, DAVID KEYTON AND JILL LAWLESS

French author Annie Ernaux leaves her home in Cergy-Pontoise, outside Paris, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022. 2022's Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to French author Annie Ernaux. The 82-year-old was cited for "the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory," the Nobel committee said. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

PARIS (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for blending fiction and autobiography in books that fearlessly mine her experiences as a working-class woman to explore life in France since the 1940s.

In more than 20 books published over five decades, Ernaux has probed deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions.

After a half-century of defending feminist ideals, Ernaux said “it doesn’t seem to me that women have become equal in freedom, in power,” and she strongly defended women’s rights to abortion and contraception.

“I will fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother, or not to be. It’s a fundamental right,” she said at a news conference in Paris. Ernaux’s first book, “Cleaned Out,” was about her own illegal abortion before it was legalized in France.

The prize-giving Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

“She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron’s background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

Ernaux’s books present uncompromising portraits of life’s most intimate moments, including sexual encounters, illness and the deaths of her parents. Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

Dan Simon, Ernaux’s longtime American publisher at Seven Stories Press, said that in the early years, “she insisted that we not categorize her books at all. She did not allow us to refer to them as fiction and she did not allow us to refer to them as nonfiction.”

Ultimately, he said, Ernaux has created “a genre of fiction in which nothing is made up.”

“She’s a great storyteller of her own life,” Simon said.

Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Les armoires vides” in 1974 (published in English as “Cleaned Out”). Two more autobiographical novels followed – “Ce qu’ils disent ou rien” (“What They Say Goes”) and “La femme gelée” (“The Frozen Woman”) – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

In the book that made her name, “La place” (“A Man’s Place”), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she wrote: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

“La honte” (“Shame”), published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “L’événement” (“Happening”), from 2000, dealt like “Cleaned Out” with an illegal abortion.

Her most critically acclaimed book is “Les années” (“The Years”), published in 2008. Described by Olsson as “the first collective autobiography,” it depicted Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Its English translation was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2019.

Ernaux’s “Mémoire de fille” (“A Girl’s Story”), from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s, while “Passion Simple” (“Simple Passion”) and “Se perdre” (“Getting Lost”) chart Ernaux’s intense affair with a Russian diplomat.

Ernaux has described facing scorn from France’s literary establishment because she is a woman from a working-class background.

“My work is political,” she said at the news conference. She described growing up in a milieu outside the elite, a world of “people above you” and the seeming impossibility of becoming a famous writer.

The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

More than a dozen French writers have captured the literature prize, though Ernaux is the first French woman to win, and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.

Olsson said the academy was working to diversify its range, drawing on experts in literature from different regions and languages.

“We try to broaden the concept of literature but it is the quality that counts, ultimately,” he said.

Ernaux said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the Nobel’s cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000).

“I have a problem with money,” she told reporters. “Money is not a goal for me. ... I don’t know how to spend it well.”

A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize on Tuesday for work showing that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs to target cancer and other diseases.

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

The prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10. The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

Keyton reported from Stockholm and Lawless from London. Masha Macpherson in Clergy, France; John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Naomi Koppel in London; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at

https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

European Force Battling Extremists Withdraws From Mali

FILE - Soldiers from the European Task force Takuba march during the annual Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, Wednesday July 14, 2021. A European military task force fighting extremists in Mali has formally withdrawn from the West African country amid tensions with its ruling military junta. The French military spearheaded the Takuba task force, and announced Friday, July 1, 2022 that it officially ended its work. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)

BY ANGELA CHARLTON

PARIS, FRANCE (AP) — A European military task force that helped Mali’s government fight Islamic extremists has formally withdrawn from the West African country amid tensions with its ruling military junta.

The French military, which spearheaded the Takuba task force, announced Friday that it officially ended its work Thursday. The move was tied to France’s decision earlier this year to withdraw troops from Mali after nine years helping Malian forces fight violent extremists who had threatened to seize power.

The European departure comes after at least 132 people were killed in several villages in central Mali in recent weeks in attacks blamed on jihadi rebels linked to al-Qaida, and after a contractor for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Mali was killed Thursday.

It also comes as Mali’s junta has grown closer to Russia, as Moscow has looked to build alliances and gain sway in Africa.

The European Takuba force was composed of several hundred special forces troops from 10 countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. It aimed at training and protecting Malian combat forces.

Despite the withdrawal, the French military called the force a “strategic and tactical success” and an example of “what Europeans are able to achieve together in complex security environments,” saying that lessons learned from Takuba could be used in future joint operations.

In announcing its pullout, France accused Mali’s authorities of neglecting the fight against Islamic extremists. France is maintaining a military presence in neighboring West African nations facing similar threats.

Insurgents remain active in Mali, and extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali, stoking animosity and violence between ethnic groups in the region.

The recent attacks on villages in central Mali were the deadliest since mutinous soldiers toppled the president in 2020.

Then on Thursday, a Malian contractor for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali was killed by armed militants on a motorcycle in the city of Menaka. The U.N. force MINUSMA said he was in route to see his hospitalized wife when he was killed, denouncing the killing as a “cowardly and barbaric act.”

The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday to maintain the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, while condemning its military rulers for using mercenaries who are accused of committing human rights and humanitarian violations.

The junta has hired mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, which has been accused by the European Union and human rights groups of violating human rights and international humanitarian law. While the Kremlin denies links to the company, Western analysts call it a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia and China abstained from the French-drafted U.N. resolution, which extends the mandate of the mission until June 30, 2023, with its current ceiling of 13,289 military personnel and 1,920 international police.

Officials say more than 270 peacekeepers have died in Mali, making it the U.N.’s deadliest peacekeeping mission.

Masterpiece Found In French Woman's Kitchen Sells For $26.6M

In this Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019 file photo, art expert Stephane Pinta points to a 13th-century painting by Italian master Cimabue in Paris, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. A masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered in an elderly French woman's kitchen is expected to sell for millions at auction. Stephane Pinta, a painting specialist with the Turquin gallery in Paris, said an auctioneer spotted the painting while inspecting the woman's house in Compiegne in northern France and suggested she bring it to experts for an evaluation. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File )

THOMAS ADAMSON

PARIS (AP) — An old painting found in the kitchen of an elderly French woman, who considered it an icon of little importance, has made her a multimillionaire.

The work, a masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered earlier this year, sold for 24 million euros ($26.6 million) Sunday.

Dominique Le Coent of Acteon Auction House, who sold the masterpiece to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, said the sale represented a “world record for a primitive, or a pre-1500 work.”

“It’s a painting that was unique, splendid and monumental. Cimabue was the father of the Renaissance. But this sale goes beyond all our dreams,” Le Coent told The Associated Press.

An auctioneer spotted the painting in June while inspecting a woman’s house in Compiegne in northern France and suggested she bring it to experts for an evaluation. It hung on a wall between the kitchen and dining room.

The woman will now receive “the majority” of the sale money, the auction house said.

The expected sale price had been 4 million to 6 million euros ($4.4 million to $6.6 million).

Le Coent said experts were off the mark because it was the first time a Cimabue had ever gone under the hammer. “There’s never been a Cimabue painting on sale so there was no reference previously on how much it could make,” he explained.

Titled “Christ Mocked,” the painting measures about 10 inches by 8 inches (24 by 20 centimeters).

Art experts say it is likely part of a larger diptych that Cimabue painted around 1280, of which two other panels are displayed at the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery in London.

The painting’s discovery has sent ripples of excitement through the art world.

Cimabue, who taught Italian master Giotto, is widely considered the forefather of the Italian Renaissance. He broke from the Byzantine style popular in the Middle Ages and began to incorporate elements of movement and perspective that came to characterize Western painting.

Specialists at the Turquin gallery in Paris initially examined the painting and concluded with “certitude” that it bore the hallmarks of Cimabue.

Stephane Pinta, an art specialist with the Turquin, pointed to likenesses in facial expressions and buildings, as well as the painter’s techniques for conveying light and distance.

Macron Says UN Refugee Agency Attacked, Decries Libya Camps

A migrants splashes water on his face as he disembarks with others from an Italian Guardia di Finanza finance police boat at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, southern Italy, early Tuesday, July 9, 2019. According to reports 53 migrants were rescued in the Sicilian Channel by an Italian Coast Guard patrol vessel, but six of them were immediately transferred to Lampedusa due to medical conditions. (Ciccio Ruta/ANSA via AP)

BY ELAINE GANLEY

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron called on Libyan authorities Monday to stop holding transiting refugees in detention camps and said buildings of the United Nations’ refugee agency in Libya were attacked earlier in the day.

Macron did not elaborate on the attack he said was carried out on buildings of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He said Libya should end the “confinement” of refugees and house in safe places those who reach the North African country.

Libya has become a major conduit for African migrants and refugees hoping to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. An airstrike on a detention center near the Libyan capital killed more than 50 migrants and wounded dozens of others earlier this month.

Macron met with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and the director general of the International Organization for Migration on Monday, after European ministers in Paris tried to find agreement on dealing with Europe-bound migrants who use Libya as a stepping stone.

The European Union has spent hundreds of millions of euros to equip and train Libya’s coast guard and to improve the conditions of the detention centers. Under a deal with the EU, Libyan vessels apprehend refugees and migrants setting out from the coast and take them back.

Macron announced that eight countries had formally signed on to a French-German initiative to cooperate in a burden-sharing mechanism and 14 assented to it. Southern European countries like Italy and Greece have complained for years that they shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for arriving migrants.

“Europe isn’t a la carte when it comes to solidarity,” Macron said, with countries saying they don’t want a Europe that shares burdens but are in favor of unity “when it’s about receiving structural funds.”

Absent from the closed-door meeting of EU interior and foreign ministers was Italy’s populist, anti-migrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini. He tweeted strong disagreement Sunday with letting France and Germany determine the bloc’s refugee policy while nations like Italy are on the front line.

“We intend to make ourselves respected,” Salvini declared in another tweet.

Without naming Italy, Macron regretted the absence of some countries from the table, saying that “we gain nothing by non-cooperation.”

However, he reiterated the law of the sea by which boats must be able to enter the surest and closest port, which for vessels coming from Libya typically is Italy.

Salvini has barred private aid ships that rescue migrants from entering Italy’s ports, forcing NGOs to find another country willing to allow their rescue boats to dock and bartering among nations to divide up the migrants onboard.

U.N. High Commissioner Grandi said he was encouraged by the progress in finding a method for sharing the work of housing asylum-seekers and processing their applications.

Last month, Grandi and International Organization for Migration Director General Antonio Vitorino lamented that the EU had no predictable strategy for providing rescue boats with safe harbor and sharing newly arrived migrants.

The number of migrant crossings on the central Mediterranean route that leads to Italy has diminished drastically since 2015 and 2016.

“We no longer are living an arrival crisis .... We live a crisis of deaths,” Vitorino said.

According to the IOM, up to June 19, there were 2,252 arrivals in Italy and 1,151 in Malta, while at least 343 people died at sea.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas voiced hope earlier in the day that a solution was on the horizon.

“The haggling about emergency rescue in the Mediterranean must finally end,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said after the ministerial meeting. “It is really necessary that we manage to put together a coalition of those who are prepared to help, and I think we came a step closer to that today.”

The UNHCR and IOM chiefs joined Macron in stressing the need for rescue help from NGOs, which Italy has denounced, claiming they help traffickers.

On Sunday, the SOS Mediterranee, a French charity, partnering with Doctors Without Borders, announced it has returned to the sea with a new boat to save migrants, seven months after the flag was pulled from its original ship, Aquarius. The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking is heading to the Mediterranean with a 31-member crew, the group said.

Salvini wasted no time in warning SOS Mediterranee that Italy was not about to bend on its policy of keeping rescue ships at bay, tweeting Monday, “if someone is thinking about helping smugglers or breaking laws, be careful because we won’t be standing still.”

The Aquarius, SOS Mediterranee’s original rescue ship, ended its operations last fall after Panama revoked its flag and Italian prosecutors ordered the vessel seized, accusing Doctors Without Borders of illegally disposing of tons of contaminated and medical waste. The organization says the Aquarius assisted 30,000 migrants since 2016.

Monday’s meeting follows a gathering of EU interior ministers on the issue of rescuing migrants last week in Helsinki, Finland. Salvini hailed progress there, saying other ministers shared Italy’s position of revamping Mediterranean search and rescue rules with the aim of preventing immigration abuse.

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This version has been corrected to show that Macron said Libya, not France, should provide security for vulnerable refugees.

___

Frances D’Emilio in Rome and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.

BIAFRA: President Charles De Gaulle Press Conference

President Charles de Gaulle Press Conference September 9, 1968 i  Paris. Image: Reporters Associe/Gamma-Rapho

Comments made by the President of France in Paris on September 9, 1968, at a press conference answering a reporter's question on Africa's most blood soaked event, The Pogrom:

What is his view of the situation in Biafra?
What does he think should happen there?
What action does he refuse to take with regard to Biafra? Why?

President De Gaulle's exchange with a reporter:

Question:

The drama taking place in Biafra seems to grow more tragic every day. You have alluded several times to the Biafran problem. Mr. President, could you give us your point of view on this problem ?

De Gaulle:

I am not sure that the system of federation, which sometimes, in certain parts and from a certain angle replaces that of colonization, is always a very good and very practical system, particularly in Africa. But not only in Africa, for in fact it consists in arbitrarily joining together peoples who are sometimes very different or even opposed to each other and who, therefore, have no desire whatever to be joined. We see this in Canada, in Rhodesia, in Malaysia, in Cyprus, and we see it in Nigeria. Indeed, why should the Ibos, who are generally Christians, who live in the south in a certain way, who have their own language, why should they depend on another ethnic fraction of the Federation ? Since this is what one ends up with once the colonizer has withdrawn his authority. In an artificial federation, one ethnic element imposes its authority on the others.

Even before the present drama in Biafra, one could wonder how Nigeria would be able to live, in view of all the crises the Federation was experiencing. And now that this appalling, enormous drama has occurred, now that Biafra has proclaimed its independence and that, to subdue it, the Federation is resorting to war, blockade, extermination and famine, how can it be imagined that the peoples of the Federation, Igbos included, can resume life together?

France, in this affair, has done what was possible to help Biafra. She has not performed the act which, to her, would be decisive, of recognizing the Biafran Republic, because she regards the gestation of Africa as a matter for the Africans first and foremost. Already, in fact, some States of Eastern and Western Africa have recognized Biafra. Others appear to be moving in that direction. This means that, where France is concerned, the decision which has not been taken is not ruled out for the future. And indeed, one can imagine that the Federation itself, recognizing the impossibility of keeping on its present organization, may turn itself into some kind of union or confederation that would reconcile Biafra's right to self-determination with continuing ties between it and the whole of Nigeria.

Text courtesy of French Embassy in London via Kirk Green