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- Three questions
.to
Jacques Gaillot
Recently we saw in some suburban areas
considered as "difficult" an outburst of violence in
France. Can we speak of a failure of the French method for foreigner
integration?
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- A failure yes but not to reconsider
the method.
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Isolated in their district, humiliated
by injustice, the youth reacted with violence, a mad and irresponsible
violence as it is said. But are they not the victims of a more
unbearable violence that spoiled their every day life without
any hope? |
Whenever they enter a shop, a guard follows them, whenever they
get a drink in a bar down town they are asked to pay in advance,
whenever they look for a job or a lodging they are turned down
because of their ethnic origin! Everywhere they go they see only,
fear, suspicion and mistrust.
These youth brutally show they exist and are the focus of the
media. Repression is the response to their anger: police, trials,
condemnations, jail and expulsion
So many promises of social
aids, have been made but never happened, so many lies have been
spread, so many political vows have been forgotten!
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- The "syndrome of burning
cars" seems to be specific to France; this does not exist
in other countries. What do they want to say by this action?
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Burned cars throughout France express
anger and riot of the youth who are left without future and place
to live. They feel they are not welcomed.
Through these burned cars the youth are presenting to us a mirror
image of our society. |
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- A society where companies lay down
employees when collecting big amounts of money but are not prosecuted;
a society that has no more money for education and health care
but reduces taxes for higher incomes, a society that creates
needs, advertises to buy more and more but makes excluded people
to whom it refuses a minimum to live.
We can only extinguish the fire by not
adding fuel to it: injustice, racism, inequality, unemployment
etc
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- The World summit for Information
Society is held in Tunis. There will be questions about the "digital
divide" and the control of Internet by the USA. Can new
technologies increase the division between the North and the
South?
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- A billion people use Internet. The
greater numbers who connect are from Asia, then from Europe and
North America.
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The digital divide exists between rich
and poor. Will it be overcome in the years to come? It is not
sure. But the extension of the Web favours the development of
democracy. |
(Interviewed by Olivier Galzi)
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