France to rewrite law on rewriting past
France will rewrite a much-contested law that requires textbook publishers to put an upbeat spin on France’s colonial past, President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday.
In a New Year’s address to journalists, Chirac said the law ordering school textbooks to highlight the positive role of France’s colonial past was dividing the French and should be revamped.
Chirac said National Assembly President Jean-Louis Debre would propose a bill “to rewrite this text and find language that unites and soothes peoples’ minds.”
The law, which was passed quietly by the conservative-led parliament last February, has caused outrage in Algeria and elsewhere in France’s former colonial empire.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a presidential hopeful, was forced to put off a trip to the Caribbean territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe after residents announced plans to protest during his visit. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika equated the law with “mental blindness” and said it smacks of revisionism.
The uproar embarrassed the conservative government, already shaken by three weeks of rioting widely blamed on France’s failure to integrate ethnic minorities, most of whom come from former colonies.
Opposition Socialists tried to kill the law in parliament in November. But France’s conservative-led lower house, in a 183-94 vote, rejected the effort. Passage would have been unusual, since the effort to overturn the law came from the government’s political opponents.
Though the law was upheld, the government promised that textbooks would not be changed.
The outrage continued, however, and Chirac ordered the law to be reviewed last month. France’s tourism minister, who is from French Guiana in South America, praised Chirac on Wednesday for trying to restore national unity.
“These reassuring words will go straight to the hearts of our compatriots overseas, and beyond that, they show the need for looking together at our history, without complexes but also without pretence,” Leon Bertrand said.
The Socialists argued that rewriting the law was not enough.
“The only solution is to repeal this ’law of shame,’ pure and simple,” said Victorin Lurel, a Socialist Party lawmaker from Guadeloupe.
