French army convoy on its way to Mali and the demonstrators

The French army convoy on its way to Mali was again attacked by demonstrators, but this time in Niger. After having been blocked for several days by several hundred young people mobilized by the “Coalition of African Patriots of Burkina Faso” in the locality of Kaya, the French military convoy, while it was crossing Téra, in western Niger, was again blocked by “a thousand demonstrators“, specifies the French staff, reports Le Journal du Dimanche.

Previously, Le Canard Enchaîné had already been moved by the Kaya incident, in which this satirical weekly discerned “a humiliating situation for the French staff “. “Who will dare to explain why French soldiers are today wandering the roads of the Sahel?“, Le Canard Enchaîné was already wondering, “those who, at the high school or elsewhere, will still have to justify the presence of French people in the Sahel have their work cut out for them,  “remarked the irreverent palmipede of the French press.

Spectacular position taken by the Minister for Overseas France in the social crisis which is shaking the French Antilles. Sébastien Lecornu, Saturday, paved the way for a debate on the autonomy of Guadeloupe. This island in the French Antilles is “on a volcano,” says Le Journal du Dimanche . Not to evoke Soufrière, the local volcano, but “the anger” which has seized this island in the French Antilles, “like an overseas remake of the yellow vests“. 

Then ? So the Minister of Overseas Territories threw a stone in the pond. “I will have no taboos,” said Sébastien Lecornu in a video message. Some elected officials have asked the question, hollow, of autonomy in relation to its current status as an overseas department or region (…) The government is ready to talk about it.

For Le Parisien Dimanche , the Minister of Overseas Territories thus played “a game of poker“. Certain Guadeloupean actors “ask that the statute can evolve towards an Overseas collectivity to give them more autonomy,” Sébastien Lecornu told this newspaper. It is not in the government’s plan, but why refuse the debate?“. But beware, he adds, “autonomy does not mean independence. French Polynesia and New Caledonia are already in a logic of autonomy. However, they do not threaten national unity! (…) I repeat, I’m not afraid of taboo debates (…) I know what I’m doing”.

“Autonomy is certainly not independence,” he repeats in Le Journal du Dimanche , “I will not refuse this debate if it is asked (…) I prefer a frank debate around this question than false pretenses,” says Sébastien Lecornu in Le JDD .