FRANCE: France has been sullied by racism and anti-Semitism, President Jacques Chirac said yesterday in what his aides billed as a "ground-breaking" address.
Mr Chirac reportedly wrote the first-person speech himself, in response to a spate of desecrations of Jewish and Muslim cemeteries, mostly in Alsace, since April. In Herrlisheim, 125 graves at the Jewish cemetery were daubed with anti-Semitic and Nazi graffiti on April 30th.
In separate incidents in June, the graves of nearly 100 Muslims were desecrated in Strasbourg and Haguenau.
The French President chose Chambon-sur-Lignon, population 2,500, to deliver his address. Chambon is a Protestant village on the Cévennes plateau in south-central France with a long history of sheltering the persecuted. During the second World War, residents of Chambon saved several thousand Jews from Nazi death camps. For this reason, the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem awarded Chambon the title of "just among the nations", making it the only place (rather than individual) to receive the honour.
By defying the orders of Vichy France, Mr Chirac said, Chambon "affirmed the soul of the nation" and "embodied the conscience of our country". The little village represented "the France I believe in", he added.
Yet today, "acts of hatred, odious, contemptible, are sullying our country", Mr Chirac continued. "Discrimination, anti-Semitism, racism ... are spreading insidiously. They strike our Jewish compatriots who've been present in our country since time immemorial. They strike our compatriots of Muslim culture who have chosen to work and live in our country."
According to a BVA opinion poll in December 2003, 40 per cent of French people believe there are too many Muslims in France. The Muslim community feels it has been singled out by a recent law which will ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools from September.
The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights says that 72 per cent of racist acts in France are directed against the Jewish community. The Jewish Agency in Jerusalem reports that the number of French Jews emigrating to Israel has doubled to more than 2,000 a year, while immigration from the rest of the world has fallen.
Mr Chirac was accompanied to Chambon by Simone Veil, the former president of the European Parliament and former cabinet minister who was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 16. Representatives of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths were invited to yesterday's ceremony because of their historic ties to Chambon. The Élysée said no Muslims were invited, to avoid turning the President's speech into a religious occasion.
Mr Chirac said the desecration of cemeteries and similar acts "speak of obscurantism, ignorance, stupidity". These expressions of "fanaticism, the will to humiliate ... reflect the darkest part of the human soul" and were "unworthy" of France. "I will do everything for it to cease," he promised.
French authorities pledged to catch the perpetrators of the outrages in Alsace, but have arrested no suspects. Though young north African men who identify with Palestinians are often blamed for the increase in anti-Semitic acts, the crimes in Alsace have targeted nearly as many Muslims as Jews and are believed to have been committed by extreme right-wing militants.
Mr Chirac asked the French Justice Ministry to punish such acts "with the greatest severity and exemplarity". He said he would not allow cases of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia or homophobia to be shelved.
"Every act must be punished," he said, calling upon tribunals to contest sentences they deemed too lenient.
The French President made what he called "a solemn appeal to every French man and woman" to be vigilant. Paraphrasing Gen Charles de Gaulle, he asked them to "make live a certain idea of Man, a certain idea of France".