Emmanuel Macron – Faith Matters

Police arrest leader of radical Islamist party in Lahore

Faith Matters — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 22:31:33 +0000

Police in Pakistan have arrested the leader of a radical Islamist political party a day after he threatened the government with protests if it did not expel France’s ambassador over depictions of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.

Saad Rizvi was arrested in the eastern city of Lahore to “maintain law and order”, said Ghulam Mohammad Dogar, chief of Lahore police.

Rizvi called on the government to honour what he said was a commitment it made in February to his party to expel the French envoy before April 20 over the publication in France of depictions of Islam’s Prophet.

The government has said that it only committed to discuss the matter in parliament.

Mr Dogar provided no further details about the arrest, which quickly drew condemnation from Rizvi’s supporters who began gathering near the party’s main office for a protest.

Clashes soon erupted in Lahore between police and Rizvi’s supporters, who were also rallying on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad, disrupting traffic and inconveniencing residents.

Protesters also blocked some roads in the southern port city of Karachi and elsewhere in the country, raising fears of violence amid a surge in cases of coronavirus in Pakistan.

Rizvi emerged as the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labai

k Pakistan party in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.

His supporters have previously held violent rallies in Pakistan to pressure the government not to repeal the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.

The party wants the government to boycott French products and expel the French ambassador under an agreement signed by the government with Rizvi’s party in February.

Tehreek-e-Labiak and other Islamist parties have denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year, saying he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed as freedom of expression.

Mr Macron’s comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class.

The images had been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures.

That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believed those depictions were blasphemous.

Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 federal elections, campaigning on a single issue: defending the country’s controversial blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.

It also has a history of staging protests and sit-ins to pressure the government to accept its demands.

In November 2017, Rizvi’s followers staged a 21-day protest and sit-in after a reference to the sanctity of the Prophet Mohammed was removed from the text of a government form.

Bill to tackle radical Islamist beliefs in France under debate

Faith Matters — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:01:34 +0000

French legislators are set to debate a bill to tackle radical Islamic ideology.

Some authorities maintain that such radical beliefs are creeping into public services, schools and online platforms, with the goal of undermining national values.

The bill is broad and controversial, with 1,700 proposed amendments, and guarantees heated debate for the next two weeks in the lower house of the French parliament.

It reflects a priority for France’s president Emmanuel Macron, who in an October speech painted a dark picture of a perverse version of Islam, France’s second most-popular religion, quietly making inroads and creating a “counter-society”.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin, a right-leaning member of Mr Macron’s centrist party, wrote a short book on the subject, due to be released in a matter of days. His Manifesto For Secularism outlines fundamental values of France that the bill he sponsors is meant to protect.

“Islamism is a Trojan horse hiding the fragmentation bomb of our society,” Mr Darmanin wrote, according to excerpts from the daily Le Figaro.

“In the face of such a dangerous and insidious enemy, which we know is far from the religion of the prophet (of Islam), it is normal that public officials take unprecedented measures.”

Multiple terrorist attacks in France by Islamist extremists provide a backdrop for the bill.

The text applies to all religions, but some Muslims say the legislation once again points the finger at Islam.

Other critics say the bill covers ground already addressed in current laws.

Meanwhile, far-right leader Marine Le Pen says the bill does not go far enough or even name the enemy: radical Islam.

In ways small and large, the bill seeks oversee the functioning of associations and mosques, including foreign financing, aiming plug up entry points for Islamist ideology into the lives of Muslims.

Among the 51 articles, the bill aims to ensure that public service employees respect neutrality and secularism, while protecting them against threats or violence.

In a bid to protect children from indoctrination and to do away with underground schools, the text requires all children from the age of three to attend a regular school.

Some 50,000 children were home-schooled in 2020, according to French media. But the number of “clandestine schools” where children are reportedly indoctrinated in radical ideology is unknown.

Among other key points, the bill aims to keep a close watch on associations, including those that often run mosques, with measures including one aimed at ensuring that outsiders cannot take control of an association.

Another measure requires associations receiving state funds to sign a “contract of Republican commitment” ensuring they honour French values.

Funding must be reimbursed if the contract is broken. While foreign funding for mosques is not banned, amounts over 10,000 euros (£8,800) must be declared.

If some Muslims feel they have been stigmatised, France’s other religions say they are suffering collateral damage.

Le Monde newspaper reported religious leaders were unanimous in their criticism of the treatment of associations, telling a parliamentary commission that it adds unnecessary layers of work and oversight and arouses suspicion over all faiths.

The proposed law also seeks to halt doctors issuing virginity certificates, as well as the practice of polygamy and forced marriage.

Doctors would be fined and risk jail for providing virginity certificates.

The law includes an article that justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti has called the “Paty law” after the beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty, who showed students in a civics class caricatures of the prophet.

It creates a new crime for hate speech online in which someone’s personal details are posted.

A Chechen refugee beheaded Mr Paty after information about the teacher was spread online.

World leaders condemn beheadings by extremist rebels in Mozambique

Faith Matters — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 21:49:51 +0000

Reports of more than 50 beheadings by Mozambique’s Islamist extremist rebels have raised international alarm over the new level of violence in the country’s north.

The killings mark a bloody turn in the three-year insurgency in Cabo Delgado province, prompting condemnations from the United Nations secretary-general and the presidents of France and Zimbabwe.

In the past two weeks, the extremists have seized nine towns in the Muidumbe district of Cabo Delgado, extending their range from the port of Mocimboa da Praia, which they have held since August, according to reports in local media.

Capturing the town of Muatide, the insurgents established a centre on a football pitch where they beheaded more than 50 people, according to Pinnacle News, which has correspondents throughout the province.

The rebels abducted 15 boys participating in traditional initiation rites and their five counsellors.

All 20 were beheaded along with another nine people, Pinnacle reported on November 2.

The extremists went on to cut off the heads of 22 more people, Pinnacle reported on Nov. 7.

Mozambique’s government has not confirmed the killings, but Luiz Fernando Lisboa, the Roman Catholic bishop of Pemba, the provincial capital, said this week he had confirmed with a number of sources the report of the killings of the boys at the initiation ceremony.

He said it was impossible to say how many had been beheaded in total, according to an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was shocked by the “reported beheading and kidnapping of women and children”, his spokesman said this week.

He urged the country’s authorities “to conduct an investigation into these incidents, and to hold those responsible to account”.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the violence in a tweet on Wednesday.

“More than 50 people have been beheaded, women kidnapped, villages looted and then set on fire. Barbarians hijack a religion of peace to sow terror: Islamist terrorism is an international threat that calls for an international response.”

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa tweeted that he is “deeply shocked” by the reports of the beheadings.

“These acts of barbarity must be stamped out wherever they are found,” he said, adding that Zimbabwe “is ready to assist in any way”.

The extremists’ three-year insurgency in Cabo Delgado has claimed the lives of more than 2,200 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

More than 355,000 have been forced to leave their homes, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said at the end of October.

What started as a few dozen unemployed and disaffected young men inspired by radical Muslim ideology has grown to a force estimated at 3,000, Yussuf Adam, a Mozambican academic who has studied Cabo Delgado for years and visited the province last month, said.

The fact that the rebels have held the Indian Ocean port city of Mocimboa da Praia for three months shows their growing strength, he said.

Further south, the city of Pemba and the surrounding areas are inundated with families fleeing the violence.

International aid agencies including the World Food Program, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are working to provide emergency food and services to the displaced.

The increasingly assertive extremists launched an attack last month across the border on a town in Tanzania, the Tanzanian government confirmed.

The extremist violence is also threatening the multi-billion dollar investment being made by international companies in Mozambique’s massive deposits of liquified natural gas along the Indian Ocean coastline of Cabo Delgado province.

In its military response to the insurgency, Mozambique’s army has been accused by Amnesty International of several atrocities, including the killings of more than 10 people and burying them in a mass grave.

The Mozambican government has also engaged private security companies to help battle the rebels, according to reports in the local media.

Although Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi has discussed the problem posed by the extremist rebels with the 15-nation regional group, the Southern African Development Community, he has not officially requested their assistance.

Zimbabwe, South Africa and other neighbouring countries will not intervene without an official request from Mozambique and agreement by the group, say experts.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party spokesman Patrick Chinamasa in October said although Zimbabwe “has the full capacity to intervene in Mozambique”, any action “must be a collective” initiative of regional countries.

Zimbabwe has sent troops into Mozambique before, sending soldiers to fight the Renamo rebellion in the 1980s and 1990s.

“Militaries in southern Africa are by and large trained for conventional warfare and the situation unfolding in Mozambique may not be amenable to conventional approaches,” said Lawrence Mhandara, an expert on regional security.

“Also, many economies in the region are not performing well and counter-terrorism operations can be expensive financially and in terms of the human cost.

“There could be a feeling within the region that a military-centric approach to the conflict may not be the best at this moment,” said Mr Mhandara, who teaches in the department of political science at the University of Zimbabwe.

European leaders say collaboration key in anti-terror fight

Faith Matters — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 23:54:19 +0000

French President Emmanuel Macron said that extremist attacks are a “European reality” and the European Union must tighten the screws on weak spots like external borders and the internet.

The calls follow two deadly extremist attacks in France and another in Austria in recent weeks.

Mr Macron’s remarks came after he, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the leaders of the EU’s executive and political arms held a video conference to discuss anti-terrorism strategy.

The group also addressed journalists, a mix of voices intended to underscore the need for collaboration to defeat terrorism.

The response to terrorism and radicalisation must be “common, coordinated and rapid” with “methodic” work in the weeks ahead, before a meeting of European heads of state in December, Macron said.

Extremist attacks have bloodied numerous EU countries over the years. Mr Macron noted that on Friday, France will mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris attacks that killed 130 people at a music hall and cafes on November 13, 2015.

The French leader stressed the need to develop a shared database and improved police cooperation, and said he wants a “deep reform” of how the external borders of Europe’s visa-free travel area are policed, a plan he made public last week.

“All weaknesses at the external border or in one member state is a security risk for all members,” Mr Macron said.

He additionally wants to get “terrorist content” pulled from the internet within an hour of its appearance, “something that must absolutely be put in place in the weeks ahead”.

Interior ministers from EU member nations are scheduled to meet on Friday about how to accelerate and improve anti-terrorism work in progress, said European Council President Charles Michel, who attended Tuesday’s video conference along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The EU’s national leaders will review the situation at a December meeting, Mr Michel said.

The conference came a week after a man who officials said had tried to join the Islamic State group shot four people dead in Vienna before police shot and killed him. The shooting has strengthened calls in Austria for a crackdown on Islamic extremism.

In France last month, an Islamic extremist killed three people in a church in the French city of Nice, and another extremist beheaded a teacher near Paris because he had shown his students cartoons of Islam’s prophet for a discussion about freedom of expression.

As a result of the attacks, Mr Macron last week proposed tighter controls on the EU’s external borders, more coordinated policing inside the bloc’s visa-free zone and changes to EU migration policy.

French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

Former Malaysia PM Mahathir refuses to apologise for France attack comments

Faith Matters — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 15:22:23 +0000

Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad defends his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying that they were taken out of context as he criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.

The 95-year-old sparked widespread outrage when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.

Twitter removed a tweet from Mr Mahathir containing the remark, which it said glorified violence, while France’s digital minister demanded the company also ban Mr Mahathir from its platform.

“I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog,” Mr Mahathir said in a statement.

He said critics failed to read his posting in full, especially the next sentence which read: “But by and large Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.”

He said Twitter and Facebook removed the posting despite his explanation, and slammed the move as hypocritical.

“On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of Prophet Mohammed … and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression,” he said.

“On the other, they deleted deliberately that Muslims had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past”, thereby stirring French hatred for Muslims, he added.

On Twitter, however, that sentence was not deleted. A staff member for Mr Mahathir said the entire posting was removed by Facebook.

Facebook Malaysia said in an email that it removed Mr Mahathir’s posting for violating its policies, adding: “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook and strongly condemn any support for violence, death or physical harm.”

The comments by the two-time prime minister were in response to calls by Muslim nations to boycott French products after French leader Emmanuel Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” and vowed to crack down on radicalism following the murder of a French teacher who showed his class a cartoon depicting the prophet of Islam.

His remarks also came as a Tunisian man killed three people at a church in the southern French city of Nice.

The US ambassador to Malaysia, Kamala Shirin Lakhdir, said on Friday that she “strongly disagreed” with Mr Mahathir’s statement, adding in a statement: “Freedom of expression is a right, calling for violence is not.”

Mr Mahathir has been viewed as an advocate of moderate Islamic views and a spokesman for the interests of developing countries.

At the same time, he has pointedly criticised Western society and nations as well as their relationships to the Muslim world, while he has been denounced in Israel and elsewhere for making anti-Semitic remarks.

Demonstrations across France to pay tribute to murdered teacher

New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

Faith Matters — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:29:39 +0000

Detectives investigating an attack by a Tunisian man who killed three people in a Nice church have a second suspect in custody, as France heightens its security alert amid religious and geopolitical tensions around cartoons mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

Tunisian anti-terrorism authorities have opened an investigation into an online claim that the attack was staged by a previously unknown Tunisian extremist group.

Muslims held more anti-France protests across the Middle East and beyond on Friday, while mourners placed flowers, messages and candles at the entrance to the Notre Dame Basilica in the French Riviera city where Thursday’s knife attack took place.

The attacker, Ibrahim Issaoui, was seriously wounded by police and taken to hospital in life-threatening condition, authorities said. Anti-terrorism prosecutors in France and Tunisia are investigating.

The new suspect is a 47-year-old man believed to have been in contact with the attacker the night before the attack, according to a judicial official.

A substitute prosecutor at the Tunisian anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office, Mohsen Dali, told the Associated Press a claim of responsibility came in an online post saying the attack was staged by a group called Al Mehdi of Southern Tunisia, previously unknown to Tunisian authorities.

The victims included 55-year-old Vincent Loques, a father of two who was the church’s sacristan, in charge of its holy objects, according to local broadcaster France-Bleu.

Another was a 44-year-old mother of three from Brazil named Simone who had studied cooking in Nice and helped poor communities, France-Bleu said.

In an interview broadcast on Friday with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV, the attacker’s mother said she was shocked by the events.

She said she was surprised to hear her son was in France and had no idea what he was planning. “You don’t know the French language, you don’t know anyone there, you’re going to live alone there, why, why did you go there?” she said she told him over the phone when he arrived.

His brother told Al-Arabiya that Issaoui had informed the family he would sleep in front of the church, and sent them a photograph showing him at the cathedral. “He didn’t tell me anything,” he said.

A neighbour said he knew the assailant when he was a mechanic and held various other odd jobs, and had shown no signs of radicalisation.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the suspect is a Tunisian born in 1999 who reached the Italian island of Lampedusa, a key landing point for migrants crossing in boats from North Africa, on September 20, and travelled to Bari, a port city in southern Italy, on October 9. It is not clear when he arrived in Nice.

Tunisians fleeing a virus-battered economy make up the largest contingent of migrants landing in Italy this year. Italian media reported that from Lampedusa, where Issaoui was one of 1,300 arriving migrants on September 20, he was placed with 800 others on a virus quarantine boat in Puglia.

After the two-week quarantine, he received a notice that he was being expelled from Italy for illegal entry and was given seven days to leave the country, according to Milan daily Corriere della Sera.

Italy’s interior minister confirmed the suspect was ordered to leave Italy on October 9. Luciana Lamorgese said he was not flagged by either Tunisian authorities or intelligence agencies.

The attack was the third in less than two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were re-published by satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The images deeply offended many Muslims, and protesters burned French flags, stomped on portraits of President Emmanuel Macron and called for boycotts of French products at demonstrations in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

Mr Macron said he would immediately increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect French schools and religious sites from around 3,000 to 7,000. Schools remain open during a nationwide lockdown that started on Friday to stem the spread of coronavirus, but religious services are cancelled.

Nice imam Otmane Aissaoui condemned the “terrible act of terror, of savagery, of human insanity that plunges us into sadness, shock and pain” which had again put French Muslims in the spotlight.

The attacker “hit brothers and sisters who were praying to their lord”, he told the Associated Press. “It’s as if a mosque was touched… I am deeply Christian today.”

French leader decries terrorist attack against teacher

French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

Faith Matters — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 00:49:05 +0000

France’s president has named a domestic militant Islamist group as “directly implicated” in last week’s beheading of a history teacher who had discussed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed with his class.

Emmanuel Macron said the group will be ordered dissolved on Wednesday, when a mosque that relayed a denunciation of the high school teacher is also to shut.

Speaking after a meeting with regional officials working to counter radical Islamists, Mr Macron added that other associations and individuals are on the radar to be shut or silenced.

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people gathered in drizzly rain to honour Samuel Paty where he was beheaded on Friday as he left school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris.

Mounds of bouquets of flowers were piled in front of the school.

A terror investigation is under way into the murder by an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee, who was later shot dead by police.

The killer has been identified by authorities as Abdoullakh Anzorov.

Mr Paty had shown caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class earlier this month.

His civics course led to parental complaints and threats.

Sixteen people were detained, including members of the killer’s family and five young adolescent students at Mr Paty’s school.

Investigators are trying to learn how the killer, who lived in the Normandy town of Evreux, set up his encounter with Mr Paty, whether there was complicity and whether the beheading was premeditated.

Speaking in the Seine-St-Denis region, northeast of Paris, Mr Macron reiterated that he wants “tangible results” to combat “an ideology of destruction of the (French) Republic”.

Mr Macron said a group called the Collective Cheikh Yassine will be ordered dissolved at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.

Named after a killed leader of the Palestinian organisation Hamas, the group was founded in the early 2000s by a man who is among those detained for questioning.

Mr Macron did not provide details on how the group was “directly implicated” in the attack.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said later on BFMTV that the person in question helped disseminate the virulent message of a student’s father against the teacher.

Mr Macron has asked for quick, concrete action in the case.

The French president is waging war on what he calls “separatism”, referring to Islamist extremism that authorities say has created a parallel world in the country that counters French values.

A mosque in the northeast Paris suburb of Pantin is also being closed for six months starting on Wednesday night.

A sign posted by the regional prefecture at the mosque entrance said the house of worship would be closed for six months – with a six-month prison sentence for violators.

The Pantin mosque is being punished for relaying a message on social media from the father of a student with a virulent complaint about Mr Paty.

The father quoted his 13-year-old daughter as saying the teacher had asked Muslims to leave the classroom – a version that was contested by Mr Paty himself, according to press reports.

Authorities say the mosque has long had an imam following the Salafist path, a rigorous interpretation of the Muslim holy book.

Pantin was also the home of an 18-year-old Pakistani refugee who three weeks earlier attacked and injured two people with a meat cleaver.

A national memorial event will be held on Wednesday evening to pay tribute to Mr Paty in the courtyard of Sorbonne university, a centuries-old symbol of the “spirit of Enlightenment” and “a forum to express ideas and freedoms”, the French presidency said.

Suspect in French beheading horror was Chechen teenager

Faith Matters — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 09:47:44 +0000

A suspect shot dead by police after the beheading of a history teacher near Paris was an 18-year-old Chechen, French police said.

Authorities investigating the horrific killing of the man in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine have also arrested nine suspects, including the grandparents, parents and 17-year-old brother of the suspected attacker.

The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said.

Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim Russian republic in the North Caucasus. Two wars in the 1990s triggered a wave of emigration, with many Chechens heading for western Europe.

France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, believed to be linked to local criminal activity and score-settling.

A police official said the suspect in Friday’s attack north of the capital was shot dead about 600 yards from where the teacher was killed.

He was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun – which fires plastic pellets – and police opened fire after he failed to respond to orders to put down his weapons, and acted in a threatening manner.

French president Emmanuel Macron arrived quickly at the school on Friday night to denounce what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack”. He urged the nation to stand united against extremism.

Mr Macron said: “One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught … the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe.”

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive.

It is the second time in three weeks that terror has struck France linked to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Last month, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The weekly was the target of a deadly newsroom attack in 2015, and it republished caricatures of the prophet this month to underscore the right to freedom of information as a trial opened linked to that attack.

Friday’s terror attack came as Mr Macron’s government works on a bill to address Islamic radicals, who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside the values of the French Republic.

France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country’s second-most popular religion.

The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago, a police official told The Associated Press.

The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said.

Emmanuel Macron condemns racism but rules out removal of contested statues

Faith Matters — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 22:50:59 +0000

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to stand firm against racism but also praised police and insisted that France would not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures.

It was the first time Mr Macron has spoken on the issues since George Floyd’s death in the US unleashed protests around the world, including several in France, where demonstrators have expressed anger at racial injustice and police brutality, particularly toward minorities from France’s former colonies in Africa.

Unusually for a French leader, Mr Macron acknowledged that someone’s “address, name, colour of skin” can reduce their chances at succeeding in French society, and called for a fight to ensure that everyone can “find their place” regardless of ethnic origin or religion.

He promised to be “uncompromising in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination”.

However, he insisted that France will not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures as has happened in some other countries in recent weeks.

Amid calls for taking down statues tied to France’s slave trade or colonial wrongs, Mr Macron said “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue”.

“We should look at all of our history together” including relations with Africa, with a goal of “truth” instead of “denying who we are”, Mr Macron said.

He did not address accusations of police violence but said forces of order deserve “the nation’s recognition”.

Mr Macron also announced that France will reopen nearly everything starting Monday after three months of virus confinement measures.

The president promised an internal audit into how his administration handled the virus, notably compared to other countries like Germany.

That was in addition to a parliamentary inquiry already under way.

Despite having one of the world’s best health care systems, France was dangerously short of all kinds of masks and testing capacity as coronavirus patients overwhelmed intensive care wards in March.

More than 80 lawsuits have been filed accusing his government of manslaughter, neglect or otherwise mishandling the virus crisis.

Mr Macron sent in the army to help and ordered strict lockdown measures that slowed the spread.

But nearly 30,000 people have died, about half of them in nursing homes, and more than 150,000 have been infected.

More than 200 new virus clusters have emerged since France started reopening May 11, according to the national health agency.

Meanwhile, his government is facing growing pressure to confront racism and police violence.

At least 15,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Saturday, the latest in a string of French protests galvanised by George Floyd’s death in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, but increasingly focused on France’s own tensions between police and minorities.

In response, the government banned police chokeholds and vowed to stamp out racism among police — but that has now angered police unions, who say they’re being unfairly painted as white supremacists and staged protests of their own.

Calls are also mounting to reassess France’s colonial legacy, causing division within Mr Macron’s own camp.

Over the past two days, the culture minister denounced the decision to cancel a Paris showing of Gone With The Wind, a film long criticised as romanticising slavery, as contrary to freedom of expression.

And he firmly condemned activists who tried to take a piece of African art from a Paris museum dedicated to artwork from former colonies.

But government minister Sibeth Ndiaye, a close Macron ally and the most prominent black figure in current French politics, wrote an unusually personal essay Saturday in Le Monde calling for France to rethink its colour-blind doctrine, which aims at encouraging equality by ignoring race altogether.

“We must not hesitate to name things, to say that a skin colour is not neutral,” she wrote.

She called on the French to “confront our memories” about their history and find a “shared narrative” with former colonies.

Mr Macron’s office firmly denied a report last week that he was considering resigning and calling a snap election, but the rumour reflected the gravity of the French mood.

A new forecast last week from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed France’s economy will suffer more than most from the coming recession — and is not expected to improve much by the next presidential election in 2022.

The economy is expected to shrink at least 11% percent this year, pushing many out of work and torpedoing Macron’s goals of bringing down unemployment, rehauling the retirement system and making France more globally competitive.

Christmas market gunman evades French police two days after attack

Faith Matters — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 13:06:48 +0000

The death toll in an attack on Strasbourg’s Christmas market rose to three on Thursday as police searched through eastern France and manned checkpoints on the German border in a hunt for the fugitive gunman.

Police issued a wanted poster for Cherif Chekatt, the main suspect in the attack, who was on an watchlist as a potential security threat. Authorities say the 29-year-old was known to have developed radical religious views while in jail.

France has raised its security threat to the highest level in response to Tuesday evening’s shooting rampage, which Strasbourg’s mayor said was indisputably an act of terrorism.

Two people were killed and a third victim who was hospitalised has now died, the Paris Prosecutor’s office said. A fourth victim has been declared brain-dead. At least 12 people were wounded, several of them critically.

More than 700 police were taking part in the second day of the manhunt in Strasbourg, which lies on the west bank of the Rhine river, and the surrounding region.

Armed French and German police manned controls on either side of the Europe Bridge, which spans the frontier. Traffic on the French side was heavily backed up as officers inspected vehicles during the morning rush-hour.

Police in the German town of Kehl, on the opposite riverbank, said they had received several reports of possible sightings on Wednesday but all were false leads.

Asked if French police had been instructed to catch Chekatt dead or alive, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews: “It doesn’t matter. The best thing would be to find him as quickly as possible.”

It took police four months to track down Salah Abdesalam, the prime surviving suspect from the November 2015 militant assault on Paris, in an apartment in Brussels. One hundred and thirty people were killed in that attack as well as seven gunmen and bombers.

RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM

The Christmas market, a hugely popular attraction in the historic city, remained closed on Thursday.

Witnesses told investigators that the suspect Chekatt cried out “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greater) as he opened fire on the market, a target Paris Prosecutor Remy Heitz suggested may have been chosen for its religious symbolism.

Chekatt’s police file photo shows a bearded man of North African descent, with a prayer bruise on the centre of his forehead. He has 27 criminal convictions for theft and violence, and has spent time in French, German and Swiss jails.

Neighbours on the housing estate where Chekatt family’s lived described the suspect as a typical young man who dressed in jogging pants and trainers rather than traditional Islamic robes.

“He was a little gangster, but I didn’t see any signs of him being radicalized,” said one local association leader who declined to be named, standing outside Chekkat’s apartment building.

The attack took place at a testing time for President Emmanuel Macron, who on Monday announced tax concessions to quell a month-long public revolt over living costs that spurred the worst unrest in central Paris since the 1968 student riots.

Griveaux said a decision had yet to be taken on whether to ban another planned “yellow vest” protest in Paris. The last three consecutive Saturdays of riots in the capital have seen cars torched, shops looted and the Arc de Triomphe defaced.

“We’re simply saying at this stage that, given the events that are unfolding after the terrorist attack in Strasbourg, it would be preferable if everyone could go about a Saturday before the festive holidays in a quiet way,” Griveaux said.