16/04/2024

Arts and colonial history: Will France work on rendering looted artefacts?

 



'Titanic' Task Of Finding Plundered African Art In French Museums



During a visit to Burkina Faso in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to return "African heritage to Africa" within five years, pushing other former colonial powers, including Belgium and Germany, to launch similar initiatives.

In 2021, France repatriated 26 royal treasures its soldiers took from Benin during colonial rule.

The effort has stalled, and in March the government indefinitely postponed a bill authorising the return of African and other cultural artefacts following right-wing resistance in the Senate.

French museums are nonetheless studying the origins of some 90,000 African objects in their archives.

With tens of thousands of African artworks in French museums, curators face a huge task in trying to identify which of these were plundered during colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries and should be returned.

Most -- 79,000 -- are in the Quai Branly museum in Paris dedicated to indigenous art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

The task is "titanic and exhilarating", said Emilie Salaberry, head of the Angoulême Museum, which houses around 5,000 African objects.

"It's turned upside down how we understand our collections," she told AFP.

Identifying an object's provenance is becoming central to museum work, but tracking down the necessary information is hard and time-consuming.

France's Army Museum began its inventory in 2012 but has only been able to study around a quarter of its 2,248 African pieces.

And while it says there is a "reasonable hypothesis" that many are spoils of war, it has struggled to establish definitive conclusions.

"The main difficulty... is the relative lack of sources," a museum spokesperson told AFP.

Emilie Giraud, president of ICOM France, which oversees 600 museums, said: "It's real investigative work which requires cross-checking clues and finding sources that may be scattered, sometimes abroad, or might not even exist at all."

It is hoped the task will grow easier as this type of research becomes commonplace.

The University of Paris-Nanterre introduced a course dedicated to provenance in 2022, and the Louvre School at the heart of the famed museum followed suit in 2023.

Germany and France launched a three-year, 2.1-million-euro ($2.2 million) fund for provenance research in January.

"We need to be transparent about everything, including the inadequacies of our catalogues, our dating, and our designations," said Katia Kukawka, chief curator of the Aquitaine Museum, calling the job an "ethical imperative".

To ease the cost burden, the Aquitaine Museum, which has 2,500 African objects, is pooling resources with other organisations, including museums in Gabon and Cameroon.

But without the proposed law, it remains uncertain what criteria will determine when an object must be returned to Africa.

If it was illegally acquired, that might be sufficient, said Salaberry, of the Angouleme Museum, but the lack of clear historical records will continue to frustrate restitution efforts.

"There will be an enormous number of objects for which light can never be shed," she said.

Loans and long-term retainers could be an alternative to full restitution -- as Britain recently did for items from the Ashanti, or Asante, royal court in Ghana.

But not everyone was impressed with that.

As Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a culture adviser to Ghana's government, told the BBC: "Someone comes into your home and steals something, keeps it in their house, and then X amount of years later comes up and says 'I'm going to lend you your things back'. It doesn't make any sense."

(AFP)

Games - D-100

 

Is fractious France ready for an Olympics party?



PARIS (AFP)  – Organisers of the Paris Olympics have promised a “great national party” for the country, but with 100 days to go, France’s bitter politics and gloomy mindset are dampening the mood.

Those involved in the delivery of the Games, particularly chief organiser Tony Estanguet, remain upbeat.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for our country to host this event, to welcome the world and also showcase what this country is about to do and deliver,” he said last week.

However, he admitted he was not surprised to hear complaints and doubts.

“We all know that before this kind of big event, there are always many questions, many concerns,” he added.

The construction work is on track and the budget looks set to be relatively contained compared to the huge blow-outs seen at the Athens, London or Rio de Janeiro Games.

*

France President Emmanuel Macron cut a slightly frustrated figure as he inaugurated a new aquatics centre in early April, speaking as if the public and media were not giving organisers enough credit.

“Look at the history of previous Games,” he urged, promising that the Paris edition would make the nation “proud”.

But instead of pride, the build-up has been marred by rows that go to the heart of a bitter national debate about identity and race.

Influential far-right politicians have criticised the official Games poster – a Christian cross was omitted from a depiction of a Paris landmark – as well as the choice of artists for the opening ceremony on July 26.

The prospect of an appearance by Franco-Malian R&B superstar Aya Nakamura caused an uproar among conservatives who criticised her supposed “vulgarity” – something described as “pure racism” by France’s culture minister.

*

Herve Le Bras, a veteran sociologist and author of a 2018 book titled “Feeling bad in a France that is doing well”, said he was sceptical that the Olympics could serve as a national celebration.

“There are lots of suggestions that they will underline the major fractures in France – notably the fracture between Paris and the rest of the country,” he said.

Why does the country feel so bad about itself while being among the richest in the world, with one of the most generous social security systems, and a lifestyle that is envied across the globe?

A major survey by the Ipsos group last September found eight out of 10 people thought the country was in decline and nearly one in two said they felt angry and contrarian.

In another era – during the decades of bullish post-war expansion in France, for example – the country might have been more ready to celebrate the Olympics, Le Bras suggests.

“We had a sense then everything was moving in the direction of progress. We’re not in that sort of period now,” he said.

*

Jean Viard, another well-known sociologist, believes that the risk of terrorism and wars in Europe and the Middle East are weighing on people’s minds.

“We live in an era where there is the climate danger, the war in Ukraine, the war in Israel,” he said. “People feel like they are surrounded by violence.”

The Olympics are also taking place at a time where the rising cost of living is causing economic hardship, making the often high ticket prices for events hard to stomach.

“You hear the same thing at all levels of society:

 ‘We’re organising a show, we’re paying for it, but we are not able to take part’,” said Paul Dietschy, a sports historian.

Other concerns include the fast-rising public debt – just as new estimates emerge suggesting that taxpayers could end up with an Olympics bill of up to €5 billion (S$7.25 billion).

And the gleaming new Olympic Village has been unveiled at a time when the country faces a housing crisis.

“That makes people uneasy,” Le Bras said. 


AFP


14/04/2024

Sudan: One year of war

 

The text I wrote for 15 April:


Sudan on its knees after a year of brutal civil war 


A year ago on 15 April the civil war in Sudan began, with severe violence displacing millions. As hunger is rising to the level of famine, and aid is hardly reaching the displaced, France and Germany host a conference in Paris on Monday, to try to raise more funds for the forgotten victims of the dire conflict.  



 - Melissa Chemam



Supporters of the Sudanese armed popular resistance, which backs the army,
ride on trucks in Gedaref in eastern Sudan on 3 March 2024. © AFP


The war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has sparked widespread hunger in the country, after destroying infrastructure and markets and displacing more than eight million people.

The InterAgency Working Group (IAWG), a consortium of both local and international humanitarian organisations is alerting the international community to the urgency of the needs, as France is to host an international summit this Monday in Paris.

Sudan's vast western region of Darfur was still reeling from the carnage of a 2003 conflict when this new war broke out in April 2023.

Fighting started on 15 April 2023 between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's army and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo's (RSF).

Diplomats and aid workers rapidly left Sudan, effectively ceasing to serve those most vulnerable.

Looting, fighting, air strikes and roads cut by warring factions have isolated every region of the northeast African country more than three times the size of France.


    Million of refugees and displaced people


    The conflict has uprooted eight million people in Sudan, displacing 6.7 million inside the country, and 1.8 million in neighbouring countries.

    Some 3.4 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian help in Chad only, following the arrival of large numbers of Sudanese refugees fleeing war.

    More than 400,000 Sudanese refugees had already fled to Chad between 2003 and 2020, according to the UN.

    "Provinces in the east of Chad are among the country's most vulnerable zones with poor access to basic services, and the arrival of refugees drastically exacerbates the need," French NGO Action Contre La Faim (ACF, or Action Against Hunger), said in a statement in April.

    "It is urgent for donors to guarantee sustainable financing of the humanitarian response," said ACF's Chad director Henri-Noel Tatangang.

    Only 4.5 percent of requirements are currently covered, he added.

    Chad's transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno declared a "state of food and nutritional emergency" throughout the country in February.

    Hundreds of thousands refugees are also fleeing the conflict in South Sudan and even Egypt. 

    The United Nations had warned in March that life-saving food aid for hundreds of thousands of people pouring out of war-torn Sudan would grind to a halt in April without international funding.

    It added it has been able to reach only 10 percent of Sudan's 48 million people, with the country on the brink of famine.


    'Catastrophic hunger'


    The World Food Programme (WFP) recently said it had negotiated the delivery of the first two convoys of food aid into Sudan's Darfur region in months.

    One convoy with 1,300 tonnes of supplies was able to arrive via the Adre border crossing with Chad into West and Central Darfur, two areas already seeing emergency levels of hunger after being overrun by the Rapid Support Forces.

    But the UN organisation is also raising warnings of impending famine caused by a one-year war and lack of access to food aid.

    Catastrophic hunger, the term used for famine conditions, is expected in Khartoum and West Darfur, which have seen the fiercest attacks, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), as well as in many other areas of Darfur that house millions of displaced people.

    More than 18 million people facing acute hunger need assistance, the WFP says.

    "I fear that we will see unprecedented levels of starvation and malnutrition sweep across Sudan this lean season," said WFP Sudan Country Director, Eddie Rowe, said in his latest statement, referring to the upcoming planting months.

    The previous cereal harvest is half of previous levels according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, while prices of some goods have doubled.


    Complicated access to aid


    Aid is hardly reaching these populations, because of insecurity but also predation.

    The belligerents are accused of using hunger as a weapon of war and diverting humanitarian aid.

    This worries donors around the world, risking an impact on the quantity of aid obtained by humanitarians, according to Anette Hoffmann, an international relations researcher in The Hague, Netherlands.

    She told RFI that she asks actors to adapt their methods. After decades of Omar al Bashir rule, including manipulation and diversion of aid being very prominent, NGOs have learned lessons. 

    "Channeling aid to local responders minimises the risk of seeking aid weaponised by both parties, which is definitely a practice that is ongoing," she said.

    Using multiple entry points through the various borders, by working, cutting out middlemen, working with smaller portions or less concentration of aid, are all mechanisms that can, maybe not eliminate but mitigate the risk of aid diversion and starvation as a weapon of war."

    "This is the positive note on the 30 years of al-Bashir's dictatorship, these learnings and this is the time to apply them."


    New state at war


    Meanwhile, drones hit the Sudanese city of al-Gadaref the second week of April, eyewitnesses and the local governor said, bringing the country's devastating war to a calm farming state.

    Almost half a million displaced people have taken refuge in around Gadaref, the capital of al-Gadaref State.

    Eyewitnesses said at least two drones had targeted military installations in Gadaref, which is located just to the east of Gezira.

    They said they heard explosions as well as anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the ground.

    The RSF has taken control of the capital Khartoum, neighbouring Gezira state as well as most of the Darfur and Kordofan regions in the west, while the army holds the north and east of Sudan including its main Red Sea port.


     (with newswires) 


    07/04/2024

    Saint Levant - Haifa in a Tesla

     





    Performed by: Marwan Abdelhamid Produced by: Henry Morris (Blanco) Mixed/Mastered by: Ruhmvn



    Reportage at La Friche, Marseille

     



    Visitors to Marseille's art venue, La Friche la Belle de Mai, can expect visual arts, performances, films and more in a gigantic space at the heart of the mediterranean city. 

    Until July, they can also discover the work of the overseas French artists shaping the latest programme: "A Field of Islands".

    Read my story here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/culture/20240407-exhibition-celebrates-marseille-as-gateway-to-the-global-south 



    Read more on Rwanda

     


    Rwanda + 30 years 


    My articles:


    RWANDAN GENOCIDE

    Rwanda marks 30 years since genocide that horrified the world

    Rwanda has begun 100 days of commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic group, were massacred by Hutu militias.

    Read the article here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240407-rwanda-marks-30-years-since-genocide-that-horrified-the-world





    Thirty years after genocide, Rwanda's relations with France are slowly mending


    France's relationship with Rwanda is gradually improving as French authorities acknowledge the country's responsibility in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which began 30 years ago this week. An estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, died in the violence perpetrated by Hutus – a faction that France had a history of supporting.




    -



    Via press agencies this Sunday - AFP 



    The world 'failed us all' says Rwanda's Kagame in genocide commemorations


    During a solemn ceremony to commemorate the 100-day massacre, Kagame said: "Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss. And the lessons we learned are engraved in blood.

    "It was the international community which failed all of us, whether from contempt or cowardice," he said, addressing an audience that included several African heads of state and former US president Bill Clinton, who had called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.

    -

    Via press agencies this Sunday - Reuters 



    April 7 (Reuters) - Following are some details about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 that killed more than 1 million people. Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary on Sunday.
    WAR:
    * In 1990, rebels of the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded northern Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda. The RPF's success prompted President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, to speed up political reforms.
    * In August 1993, Rwanda and the RPF signed a deal to end years of civil war, allowing for power-sharing and the return of refugees. Habyarimana was slow in implementing the agreement, and a transitional government failed to take off.
    THE SPARK:
    * On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana and neighbouring Burundi's president, Cyprien Ntaryamira - both Hutus - were killed in a rocket attack on their plane over the capital Kigali.
    * The next day, presidential guards killed moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana who had tried to calm tensions.
    GENOCIDE:
    * Habyarimana's death triggered 100 days of violence in the tiny country, perpetrated mainly by Hutus against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. More than a million people were killed, many butchered with machetes by militia known as Interahamwe.
    * The RPF advanced and seized control of Rwanda after driving the 40,000-strong Hutu army and more than 2 million civilian Hutus into exile in Burundi, Tanzania and the former Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
    * In July 1994 a new government was sworn in with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, named president and RPF commander Paul Kagame as vice president. Kagame was elected president in April 2000 and remains in the office.
    TRIALS:
    * In December 1996, Rwanda's first genocide trial opened at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, northern Tanzania.
    * It ultimately heard from more than 3,000 witnesses, indicted 96 people, and sentenced 61 of them including ex-prime minister Jean Kambanda and former Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, who was accused of being in charge of the troops and Interahamwe which carried out the massacres. Both were given life sentences.
    * Most people convicted in connection with the genocide were tried in community-based "gacaca" courts in Rwanda.
    REGIONAL FALLOUT:
    * Rwandan troops invaded Congo twice during the 1990s to try to hunt down perpetrators of the genocide. Conflict there is estimated to have killed several million people, mostly through hunger and disease. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) until 2012, described the 1998-2003 war in Congo as "the greatest armed conflict after the Second World War."

    05/04/2024

    Rwanda + 30 years

     


    Macron says France and allies 'could have stopped' the Rwandan genocide

    President Emmanuel Macron believes France and its Western and African allies "could have stopped" Rwanda's 1994 genocide, but lacked the will to halt the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, the presidency has said.

    Photos from the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. Rwanda will on Sunday begin commemorations to mark 30 years since the Tutsi genocide.
    Photos from the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. Rwanda will on Sunday begin commemorations to mark 30 years since the Tutsi genocide. © Ben Curtis / AP


    Macron expressed the view in a video message to be published on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, which was carried out by Hutu extremists and lasted 100 days.

    He will not be travelling to Rwanda to attend commemorations in Kigali alongside President Paul Kagame.

    France will instead be represented by Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné.

    Macron's message will emphasise that "when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act", a French presidential official said, asking not to be named.

    The president believes that at the time, the international community already had historical experience of witnessing genocide with the Holocaust in World War II and the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

    Macron will say that "France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will" to do so, the official added.

    French President Emmanuel Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Presidential Palace in Kigali, Rwanda, on 27 May  2021.
    Fr           French President Emmanuel Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Presidential Palace in Kigali, Rwanda, on 27 May 2021. REUTERS 

    'One more step'

    Macron had already recognised France's "responsibilities" in the genocide during a visit to Rwanda in 2021 – adding only the survivors could grant "the gift of forgiveness".

    Since he was elected in 2017, Macron commissioned a report on France’s role before and during the genocide and ordered the country’s archives to be opened to the public. 

    The Ibuka France association, which brings together survivors of then genocide living in France, said Macon's message was an “important step”.

    Its president, the historian Marcel Kabanda, told RFI: "It is reassuring for us to go to the 30th commemoration with this declaration."

    Kabanda also called on France to go further by apologising to the victims of this genocide, and open the way to reparations – even if only through a symbolic gesture.

    French historian Vincent Duclert, who chaired the commission responsible for shedding light on the role of France in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, told RFI that Macron's speech was an example of ongoing efforts to recognised what happened.

    He said France, which had military forces on the ground in Rwanda, could have intervened in April 1994.

    The troops and other western troops had "all the means to do so" and organise "evacuation operations", he told RFI.

    "This is the way to resolve past traumas."


    -



    02/04/2024

    Senegal has a new president

     

    The day Macky Sall handed over power to Bassirou Diomaye Faye as Senegal's 5th President



    Left-winger Bassirou Diomaye Faye has been sworn in as Senegal's youngest president this Tuesday, pledging reforms to build on his stunning election win just 10 days after he was released from prison.   

     - Melissa Chemam




    The ceremony took place in the new town of Diamniadio, near the capital Dakar, from 11.40 GMT, before Faye headed for the presidential palace, for the formal handover of power with President Macky Sall.

    He then held his first official presidential speech from 1pm.

    "Before God and the Senegalese nation, I swear to faithfully fulfil the office of President of the Republic of Senegal," the 44-year-old said before hundreds of officials and several African heads of state at an exhibition centre in the new town.

    He also vowed to "scrupulously observe the provisions of the Constitution and the laws" and to defend "the integrity of the territory and national independence, and to spare no effort to achieve African unity".


    International support


    Among the guests were notably Nigeria's  President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, attended the ceremony, as well as the leaders of the juntas in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which have claimed to break away from West Africa's regional economic group Ecowas.

    After three tense years and deadly unrest in the traditionally stable nation, Faye's democratic victory was hailed from Washington to Paris, via the African Union and the European Union.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday spoke with the president-elect by telephone and "underscored the United States' strong interest in deepening the partnership," between their two countries, the State Department said.

    Faye has voiced admiration for international leaders like former US president Barack Obama and South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.

    He also seeks to bring Sahel's military-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger back into the fold of Ecowas.

    Commonly known as Diomaye, or "the honourable one" in his local Serer language, he won the March 24 election with 54.3 percent of the vote.

    The remarkable turnaround came after the government had dissolved last July his party, Pastef, co-founded with Sonko in 2014, before Sall decided, in February, to straightforwardly postpone the election.


    A new generation 


    The 44-year-old pan-Africanist becomes the youngest leader ever in charge of Senegal, and the youngest currently in power in Africa.

    He has never before held an elected office before.

    Faye's campaign was launched whilst he was still in detention.

    He was one of a group of political opponents freed from prison 10 days before the March 24 presidential ballot under an amnesty announced by Sall who had tried to delay the vote.   

    The former tax inspector has become the West African state's fifth president since independence from France in 1960.

    He is also the first to openly admit to a polygamous marriage.

    Faye is a practising Muslim from a humble background, with two wives and four children, representing a new generation of youthful politicians.


    Economic challenges


    Working with his popular mentor and founder of his party, Ousmane Sonko, who himself was barred from the election, Faye declared their priorities in his victory speech as national reconciliation, easing a cost-of-living crisis and fighting corruption.

    The anti-establishment leader has vowed to restore national sovereignty over key assets such as the oil, gas and fishing sectors.

    Faye also wants to leave the regional CFA franc, which he sees as a French colonial legacy, and to invest more in agriculture with the aim of reaching food self-sufficiency.

    But Faye has also reassured investors that Senegal "will remain a friendly country and a sure and reliable ally for any partner that engages with us in virtuous, respectful and mutually productive cooperation." 

    He is expected to unveil his government on 5 April, though he does not have a majority in the National Assembly and will have to look to build alliances to pass new laws, or call a legislative election, which will become an option from mid-November.