Paris bulletin 3 2017

There are all sorts of lovely ways to mark one’s return to Paris and I’ve done a number of them in the last week: coffee with a good friend in the café Beaubourg, lunch with another in a brasserie in the 7ème arrondissement - waiters in long white aprons, a glass of white wine with the salade and a café gourmand to finish; a walk down to the square Montholon where the paulownias are laden with frothy masses of pale lilac blossom; an afternoon in the noise and excitement of le 104, the extraordinary installations by Zimoun, from the grinding cement-mixers in the main concourse to the floor-level tapping in the half-dark of one of the largest rooms, like a thousand metallic spiders weaving their webs; another seeing the excellent documentary on a group of students of St Denis preparing for a concours d'eloquence 'A Haute Voix'. 

Zimoun: tap-tap tap in the half-dark

And there was ‘Au-delà des Etoiles’ too, (on until 25 June at the Orsay), mystical landscapes from Monet to Kandinsky. 

Georgia O'Keefe

As well as some familiar works there are one or Canadian artists and others less well-known to us Europeans. And after that, up the stairs to spend an hour trying to capture on paper the outlines of Bourdelle’s fabulously muscular Heraklès. So much to see and do.

And then there are the elections. The traditional right, like the PS, its leftwing counterpart, has slunk off to its QG to lick its wounds (and to plot), before facing up to the legislative elections in early June. Paris voted overwhelmingly to the left and in our arrondissement heavily for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, now also out of this race. The question round here is therefore what to do next? ‘S’abstenir, voter blanc – ou accepter de voter pour Macron?' It isn’t only the young people demonstrating yesterday in Paris and Rennes, under the slogan ‘ni Patrie (le Pen) ni Patron (Macron)’, who are asking the question. I am constantly hearing the same statement by older voters: ‘je ne veux plus voter ‘contre’. The memory of Chirac is live, and of what that compromise led on to - Sarkozy and the rest. On the other hand, as commentators are constantly reminding us, Marine le Pen has succeeded beyond most people’s expectations in ‘dédiabolisant l’extrème droite’. We have a potent mix of uncertainty and resentment, which could yet result in a catastrophic outcome, for everyone, le Pen voters included.

The fear of a further unleashing of xenophobia in its most hateful forms - the true face of le Pen - with the normalization of the extreme right leads me to focus in the remainder of this bulletin on a poster exhibition under the canopy at les Halles. The photography is by Samuel Bollendorff, the texts are partly taken from the testimonies of refugees. I urge you to take the time to walk round it if you are in Paris. Its title, ‘La Nuit Tombe sur l’Europe’ – ‘Night Falls on Europe’ – a reminder of what’s being fought for in this election.

No 1: ‘The Danish government is active in working to stop refugees from seeking shelter in the country.

In 2015 when there was an influx of people trying to get to Sweden the government closed the motorway linking Germany to Sweden, a 190-kilometre stretch of road which allowed them to reach Sweden on foot.

More than 300 Danish citizens who took action to help the refugees in the face of this measure, using boats, cars or by buying people train tickets, have been charged and fined up to 3,000 euros by the Danish authorities.

In January 2016 the Danish parliament passed a series of laws, designed to make life for refugees even more complicated. A refugee must now wait 3 years before s/he can apply for their family to join them. Furthermore the law now gives the police the right to confiscate goods including money and jewelry, from refugees as they arrive in Denmark.’

No 2: extract from the accompanying text: ‘Calais is now famous for being the town with the highest number of police per inhabitant of any French town.

‘Two police got into the truck I was hiding in. The first one used tear gas, the other one hit us with his baton. One by one they hit us like that for a minute, even the women. They hit you when you’re inside the lorries. That way they can’t be filmed doing it.’ Amar, 26, Sudanese.

… Those who know best wear several layers to soften the blows. Parents whose children are wounded in these police attacks do what they can to protect them. In the space of 2 months Médecins sans Frontières has signed 90 medical certificates confirming police violence: injuries to the head, fractured jaws, lesions to the eyes because of the tear gas, dog bites… the list goes on’.

No 3: the situation for women

‘To get access to the Norrent Fontes camp the women have to pay les passeurs an entry fee of 500 euros. This is supposed to ensure their protection as well as access to the voluntary organisations in the camp and to the nearby motorway.

Yohanna is 16. She left Eritrea when her mother died. When she first got to Norrent Fontes she was sleeping in a tent with men. ‘But as soon as a place came free I went to the women’s cabin. That was a relief. In the tents it’s hard… I don’t want to talk about it… If you’ve not got any money you have no choice.’

Most of the women in the Norrent Fontes are from the Horn of Africa and they have all come to Europe via Libya.

‘There all the women are raped, even the pregnant ones. When you get to Libya you pay up and you hide. I was very afraid while I was making the crossing. They rape you, hit you. Every night there’s a different passeur and every night the same – they choose who they’re going to rape. The men are beaten and the women are raped. The lucky ones get in the boat.’

Winta is 13. She was constantly raped while traveling and has prostituted herself more than once to get the money she needed.

‘It was hard. I had no control over anything. I was totally dependent on the passeurs. I wanted just to give up in Libya. It was too hard, but that was even worse so I kept going.’

All this only yards from the parks, the flowering trees, the sandwich bars and the shops…