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Three questions….to Jacques Gaillot
 
 

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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?
 
A failure yes but not to reconsider the method.

jeunes de banlieue 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!
 
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?
 
quartier sensible 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.
 
 
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… 

colère

 
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?
 
A billion people use Internet. The greater numbers who connect are from Asia, then from Europe and North America.

accès pour tous 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)