The words of the Minister of the Interior, who spoke on slavery in the Antilles during a conference on Thursday, are denounced by around twenty ultramarine deputies.
By Nathalie Guibert
About twenty deputies from the Antilles, Guyana, Reunion and Polynesia, denounced, Friday, February 3, the “new form of historical revisionism” of the Minister of the Interior and Overseas, Gérald Darmanin , which spoke the day before during a conference organized by the weekly Le Point, in Paris.
Commenting on the very recent adoption by Martinique of a red-green-black flag in addition to that of France, Mr. Darmanin recalled that Nicolas Sarkozy had given his agreement for two emblems in New Caledonia, due to of the “particular” history of the Pacific island, and continued: “The Antilles were colonies, but not of settlement. I remind you that, contrary to what is said (…), it is the French Republic which abolished slavery. France has undoubtedly put, under extraordinarily difficult conditions, the populations colonized in disastrous states, but it is the Republic which abolished slavery. They are asked to love the Republic, not all the history of France. “The Minister added:” There is, in the Antilles, in Guyana, an identity feeling, of reaction, which deserves to be heard but not like New Caledonia, because this is not the same story. “
These comments have not made. “To the moral relativism of the colonizing powers, convinced of bringing culture and knowing to the populations whose capacities of self -determination they were killing at the same time as they killed their creative power, seems to have succeeded a new form of historical revisionism”, thus denounce the parliamentarians. The signatories of the press release recall that “the abolition of slavery is above all the fruit of the struggle of our ancestors, the consecration of so many women and men with the sacrificed lives, the result of the constant resistance of slaves, forced to tear off their freedom where the decisions of the Republic mentioned by Gérald Darmanin were slow to be proclaimed, and even more, to be applied “.
” Knowledge marked by colonialist heritage “
In the context of the battle on pensions, after a budgetary discussion that the government closed by article 49.3 of the Constitution, they also affirm: “It is this same Republic which maintains our territories of Overseas in a state of chronic underdevelopment and which is almost systematically in silence the overseas territories in the bills presented in the Parliament, gradually witnessing the latter of its prerogatives. “
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