Report by: Ahsan ullah
According to Ug news Media Europe,There are separatist-nationalist movements almost everywhere in the world, including Western European countries. For example, there are regions such as Catalonia and the Basque Country in Spain, South Tyrol and Sardinia in Italy, and Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium. People living in that region have their own national roots and language, but they act as a part of the country they belong to. At the same time, there are such regions in France itself. However, France, which demands a special status for a handful of Armenians in Karabakh, does not want to grant independence or autonomy to these regions, and does not refrain from violence against their residents.Yegane Hajiyeva, chairman of the Public Union of the Institute of Young Democrats, said these thoughts in a statement to Ug News Media Europe.He noted that in 2021, the French National Assembly adopted two bills “on fighting separatism and respecting the principles of the republic” and “preventing terrorist attacks”. Both bills allow the government to take broader steps in the fight against separatism and terrorism in the country. The initiator of this bill was personally French President Emmanuel Macron. The President of France presented his initiatives on both bills to both his society and the international community under the name of “Islamic separatism” and “fighting religious radical groups” in the country.After the adoption of the draft law, the first task of the French National Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Terrorism was to investigate the creation of a criminal terrorist group against social and political activists in the separatist Corsica province on national-ethnic grounds.
France, which has embraced separatism in other countries, has been giving the international community false information about the independence-freedom movement in Corsica and Brittany for the past thirty years. It is presented in the context of radical activity with the ideology of terror and violence, not as political activity on national-ethnic grounds about national liberation movements. After 2020, the French state and personally President E. Macron act as the representative of the separatist military units in Karabakh, not only in Europe, but all over the world. French President Emmanuel Macron, a defender of separatist organizations in other countries, calls separatists in his country terrorists and extremists. It is also important to note that Emmanuel Macron is not the first French President to openly support separatism at the international level. So that, During his visit to Canada in 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle shouted “Long live free Quebec!” by openly supporting separatism in this country with his slogans, he also caused tension between Canada and France. These views of his were rightly accepted by the international community as “the official announcement of the French President’s support for Quebec separatists”, Yegane Hajiyeva emphasized.
He said: “Emanuel Macron, like his predecessor, has strained the relations between Azerbaijan and France by giving moral and “legal” support to disinformation of Armenia and the separatist regime in Karabakh with his statements that do not respect international law. However, for some reason, the French presidents Charles de Gaulle and Emmanuel Macron, who openly support separatism abroad, have acted as supporters of speaking to the separatist movements inside the country with the full face of the law. For example, the “principle of self-determination of peoples”, which President E. Macron is an ardent defender of, does not apply to Corsica and Brittany within the country. The central government implements its policy on these regions not through political integration, but in the context of fighting extremism and terrorism.
For example, only in the summer of 2022, French officials, when talking about the activities of the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), classified it as a political struggle for freedom movement and as a network spreading extremist and terrorist principles. They cited the French constitution as the basis for this. Generally speaking, in France, which has empowered itself as the cradle and defender of democracy, the constitution denies the existence of a national identity, despite the fact that the country has traditionally been characterized by significant cultural and linguistic diversity. The constitution’s idea of ”one and indivisible” France is also determined by national identity. Because despite the national-ethnic diversity in the country, the constitution classifies the citizens under one national identity – French.”
The political scientist added that active regions like Corsica, Brittany, Occitania and Savoyard in France are against the centralized state system. The division of France into regions was carried out on the basis of economic factors with the principle of equal size to simplify the management of the regions, without taking into account their socio-cultural characteristics. Until recently, the French state actively fought against any, including cultural, manifestations of regional identity.
For example, the traditional festival of Brittany was declared illegal by the state, allegedly under the pretext of encouraging separatism. A 1966 decree, which is still in force, prohibited children from being given regional names, particularly Brittany. The language policy of the French state, located in the center of Europe, has been based on anti-dialectic centrism and the principles of linguistic colonialism for centuries.In 1951, France passed the Deixon Law (La loi Deixonne), which allowed the study of regional languages as part of the general education program. However, Corsican is still not included in the list of languages accepted for teaching. In legislation, the Corsican language is recognized as a dialect of Italian and classified as a foreign language.
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