Leader Lo Lugarn-Lou Lugarn 88

Marching orders

The signs of a French state crackdown on the peoples of France have never been so obvious. Here are a few examples

- Last year’s policy, carried out by the French ministry of education, which is unfriendly to languages. It aims at axing numerous optional living and dead languages in secondary education (Occitan is mainly taught as an optional subject)

It entailed a drastic cut in the number of teaching positions at competitive examinations for the recruitment of teachers of Occitan and other regional languages and teachers of Calandretas and other immersion schools of that kind.

 - debates within the French Parliament (National Assembly and Senate) in January and February on proposals put forward by several MPs and senators to amend article 2 of the French Constitution, which guarantees French style monolingualism, as well as the Fillon bill, which does not include regional languages in the basic subjects on the curriculum.

These debates showed the courage of a few rare parliamentarians of every political persuasion. They also make clear that many politicians are panicked by the prospect of a respect for language diversity within the French State.

 Mr Patrice Gélard, acting as a spokesman in the February 16 Senate session brought up the subject of the European Charter of minority languages and considered that its provisions «  would undermine the constitutional principles of indivisibility of the French Republic, equal treatment before the law and  the uniqueness of the French people …[they would also undermine] the French policy of integrating immigrants since they would result in the creation and development of some form of emphasis on ethnicity, which is at variance with prevailing customs in the Republican tradition»

And the minister of justice added: «Let me take a single example in a field I know well on account of my duties. Let us imagine that it be lawful to take cases to courts and use not only French but the different regional languages. I can’t imagine how complex it would be for our courts to deal with that situation. »

The fears of our elected officials, groundless as they are at the moment, suggest new means of action that would enable us to confirm them.

- The Bénisti parliamentary report on interior security establishing a particularly questionable link between the mother tongue spoken at home by populations of foreign origin and their children’s difficulties at school, notably a poor command of French.

Such difficulties lead them to marginalization, absenteeism and delinquency.

The report recommends clamping down on such behaviours by making parents, teachers, medical doctors and administrative staff part of a system based on informing. It is worth noticing that, in the report, non-native languages, which are pathogenic factors, are explicitly reduced to the level of « patois ».

There was general outcry against such treatment by linguists and sociolinguists.

As for the parents of such potential or known delinquents they are ordered to speak French at home.

This is enough to consider Jules Ferry as an amateur and refute the consensus among pundits on the benefits of bilingualism.

Of course, it is easy to decipher such views. They essentially target Muslim populations.

Not surprising given that the French policy of integration is a failure.

- A June 2004 report by Jean-Pierre Obin, commissioned by the ministry of education on signs and expressions of religious affiliation in schools. This worrisome report has yet to be released. It is only available on-line and is likely to be covered up.

This report, without hackneyed phrases, takes stock of the islamization of housing projects whether in towns or in the countryside all across France with all the consequences on the treatment of women or young girls. It underlines the pressures exerted on local authorities and schools to adapt French secularism to fundamentalist Islam in the name of a so-called “Muslim nationality”, which is superior to French « nationality », the latter being reserved for those they call « the French » or « the Gauls »

- In the same vein, we shall note that the National Assembly passed an amendment to the Fillon bill, making it compulsory for school children to learn the « Marseillaise, the particularly bloodthirsty national anthem. It does not exactly dovetail with the European anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

 All this betrays a tense withdrawal into French identity challenged by the failed integration of Muslim populations. This failure is worsened by demographic factors and a family reunification policy.

But French identity is also challenged by the failure of the French system in which the state is a caricature of centralization and the public sector is bloated and inefficient. Such a system generates unemployment in a globalized economy where cut-throat competition holds sway.

In the new Europe, France, one of the founding countries, is losing its clout and its language French is being sidelined.

It is discredited internationally because of its outrageously pro-Arab policy and its president tries to play a major role on the international scene by posing as an environmentalist and an advocate of cultural diversity everywhere in the world except at home.

 We are not under any illusion either that, should the left-wing opposition be voted back into office, they would be willing to adopt a fundamentally different policy.

We have not forgotten the nice pledges, that were never honoured, in the book entitled « For a pluralistic France », a platform of François Mitterrand’s Socialist Party in 1981.

In this irreversible decline what are the marching orders for Occitan nationalists?

 We must keep our necessarily long-term but inevitable objective of a reunified and independent Occitania within the European Union and UN member.

For the time being, we have an election pending: the referendum on the European Constitution.

Stateless nations are divided on whether to vote yes or no. We chose to say a critical yes and it is understandable that some of us should be reluctant to vote yes, in particular because of Turkey and because stateless nations are not recognized. But we shouldn’t expect Europe to give us more than it can. Let us give it the means to work. We will use it as much as we can against the oppressive French State.

We should also continue our efforts to stand in the elections, without expecting to seize power quickly but to threaten French parties and possibly find ourselves playing a pivotal role to allow them to have a majority in a regional assembly or to encourage them to carry out policies independently of the central State.

This will be possible only within the framework of regional and regionalist movements like in Languedoc. It is incumbent on us to create them without necessarily carrying them, in places where they do not exist yet, without jettisoning our pan-Occitan vision.

Our first task, again and again, is to raise the consciousness of Occitan people whether they were born here or came from elsewhere (French residents and other EU nationals)

Then we should favour any germ of home rule or independence in Occitania.

This will involve, no doubt, seeking alliances with some social strata and their organizations as well as with other components of the Occitan movement.

We will not make headway everywhere at the same time and at the same pace.

It can’t be otherwise in a country as diverse as ours.

Neither should we close our eyes to the threat of Islamic « green fascism ». We advocate the integration, not the assimilation (which can only be a personal choice) of Muslim populations. We therefore condemn job and housing discrimination;

But Islamic fundamentalists are our enemies and their hazy concept of « Muslim nation », the vehicle of Arab imperialism and terrorism, and ethnism are poles apart

We can’t put up with women bondage, forced or arranged marriages, gay bashing and anti-Semitism.

On the other hand we will continue to privilege our relations with Berber activists as well as with all the victims of Arab imperialism in the world.

We wish that the Berbers and Arabs who live in our country would adopt the Occitan national feeling, learn Occitan and, why not, join the ranks of Occitan nationalists.

Last but not least, we have to know that, should we one day become politically as strong as the Catalan or Basque nationalists of the Spanish State, we will have to face a foe: the French Centralist State, which will pull out all the stops to keep its territory, without ruling out undemocratic means. It will nevertheless be more difficult for France in a European framework.

The Ibarretxe sovereignty-association plan, which we support, has come up against the refusal of the Spanish State. But will such a stance be viable if an overwhelming majority of Basques support the plan in the referendum?

This matter is of special interest to Occitan nationalists for we have our own plan, that of a new status for the Oc countries, which would fit in the new spring of European peoples.

Jean-Pierre Hilaire

Agen 1^er mars 2005