From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Europe: Racism Increasing
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 07:05:16 GMT

/** gen.newsletter: 132.0 **/
** Topic: NL12 Europe: Racism Increasing **
** Written  5:38 pm  Dec 14, 1992 by asta.unih@oln.comlink.apc.org in cdp:gen.newsletter **
EUROPE: Racism increasing all over the continent, says activist
an ips-item written by Pablo
It is a mistake to "demonise" Germany because "racism is on the
increase in all european countries, especially France, where we
have the largest nazi party on the whole continent", said an
anti-racism activist.
Fode Sylla, the president of the humanitarian group 'SOS-Racism',
made his statement after taking part in an anti-racist
demonstration in Paris on monday which lasted until early the next
day. Some 3,000 people attended the rally.
This marked the beginning of a campaign covering several countries
because "it is a question of setting our sights on a European
anti-racist movement, seeing that on subjects like the right of
asylum, the decisions are being taken at the level of the European
Community (EC), so we must be in a position to confront it," he
said.
The new president of the most important anti-racist organisation
in France announced "a demonstration as large as the one held that
Sunday in Berlin would be held shortly in paris, because the
situation is just as scandalous here.
"After what all the history books have established as indisputable
facts, after the six million deaths caused by fascism, the
president of the Front Nationale (FN), Jean-Marie Le Pen,
continues speaking in public... and Le Pen is a nazi," declared
Sylla.
A Frenchman of Senegalese origin, Sylla, 29, succeeded Harlem
Desir last month as president of 'SOS-Racism' in what is
considered as a generational renewal of the movement. The new
vice- president, Delphine Batho, is only 19.
"The danger of the FN is that it tends to become
institutionalised. It already has the support of 15 percent of the
population, perhaps more. The traditional parties tend to lose
ground, they are ambiguous on matters like immigration, and the
moderate right makes pacts with the FN," said Sylla.
"The problem in France is not immigration. this is only the mirror
of profound socio-economic problems which affect the whole of
French society. To attack the extreme right we must fight in the
first place against misery and the creation of marginal ghettos".
For Sylla "it is indispensable that we stop demonising Germany
here in France", which was the case during the referendum campaign
on Maastricht in September, "as though the ultra-rightist attacks
in the German city of Rostock were the only expression of racism
in Europe. This is a big lie. The insistence on this anti-German
discourse serves only to conceal our own miseries in matters of
racism."
The expulsion of around 1,000 Africans from the Paris suburb of
Vincennes 10 days ago "demonstrates the gravity of the situation,
because there the indifference of French society found clear
expression".
The Africans, mostly from Mali, and all legally resident in
France, had installed themselves since may in tents on the square
to demand low-cost social housing until they were expelled by the
police on October 29. Some were relocated in zones on the
outskirts of Paris.
"The socialist government lies when it says the situation has been
resolved, because the majority of them were moved into miserable
quarters, some sleeping in beds covered with blood in hospitals.
the result is that many reject this situation and are still living
on the streets," said Sylla.
About a hundred of the expelled Africans rejected their
alternative accommodation, at the lime-il brevanne hospital on the
outskirts of the capital, and set up a new encampment outside the
hospital building. The police returned Monday to dislodge them.
"What the government has done is to transform one large ghetto
into six or seven smaller ones. The scandal is that these Africans
are people who pay their taxes and have the same obligations as
any French man or woman, but not the same rights.
Everyone has been asking for years for low-cost social housing to
be made available to them, but they did not get any of these
houses because they are black, while they continue giving low-cost
housing under the table, in many cases to professionals with high
incomes. This is the French republic today," said Sylla.
According to humanitarian organisations there are 2,000 homeless
people in Paris alone. Sylla said: "It is not possible that the
French and European population accept facts such as these, which
are repeated day in, day out, with complete passivity, as though
it were a fatality or an unavoidable fact.
It is not possible that immigrants continue to be used as the
scapegoat in every national or local election, it is not possible
that the right of asylum in the whole of Europe continues to be
more and more restricted, in the midst of complete indifference,"
he believed.
Sylla concluded by pointing out that "no one can consider normal
that immigrants, whose position is entirely legal in France, do
not even have the right to vote in local elections. no one can
consider normal that the Third World be kept in this state of
abandonment".


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