Amalgam ?

Nicolas Sarkozy, French Minister of the Interior, yesterday, without indicating the source, castigated me for a sentence in the editorial I wrote on July 22 in l’Humanité. He pretended I was guilty of creating an amalgam with the situation in which children were hunted down during the period of the German occupation in France.

Under the title "The Mark of Inhumanity", my article was a reaction to the expulsion of Aminata Diallo, a young high school student who, after two weeks in a detention center, was expelled from France, her native country.

Whether it pleases Nicolas Sarkozy or not, "They are dark periods of History, when the administration of a State starts hunting down ’foreign’ children." This does not constitute an amalgam with that historically unique period of history evoked by the Minister of Interior, one characterized by deportation and extermination camps. Rather, I denounce all offenses, of one sort or another, which, to different degrees, injure human dignity. We can judge a government or a society by the way in which they treat children. That is true today with respect to child soldiers, child slaves, child prostitutes ! The present destiny of the young "placed at a distance, removed from sight" by Nicolas Sarkozy is perhaps more enviable than other fates in the hierarchy of inhuman treatments, but that does not make it any more acceptable to human dignity.

L’Humanité takes pride in being the only newspaper that gave space on its first page and dedicated an editorial to the denonciation of such a breach of humanity.

We were fully aware that our words could irritate someone who inspired such a shameful act ! Now that we see the reaction of Sarkozy, the Minister of Interior, we feel we have hit the target.

The original editorial, Stamped with the Seal of Inhumanity, or the original French article, Le sceau de l’inhumanité, which appeared in the print version of l’Humanité on Saturday, 22 July.

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