Author: Nathalie Schuck
Publication: yahoo.com
Date: November 29, 2005
URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051129/ap_on_re_eu/france_gilding_history
France's parliament voted Tuesday to uphold
a law that puts an upbeat spin on the country's painful colonial past, ignoring
complaints from historians and the former French territory of Algeria.
The law, passed quietly this year, requires
school textbooks to address France's "positive role" in its former
colonies.
France's lower house, in a 183-94 vote, rejected
an effort by the opposition Socialists to kill the law. Passage would have
been unusual, since the effort to overturn the law came from the conservative
government's political enemies.
The law has embarrassed conservative
President Jacques Chirac and threatens to delay the signing of a friendship
treaty between France and the North African nation of Algeria. France's one-time
colonial jewel won independence in 1962 after a brutal eight-year conflict
France only recently called a war.
Education Minister Gilles de Robien said last
month that textbooks would not be changed, despite the law. However, the Socialists
said the measure was offensive to former colonies and French citizens with
roots there, and should be erased.
The debate comes on the heels of three weeks
of unrest by youths in France's poor suburbs - many of them immigrants or
of North African origin. The troubles were widely seen as a desperate cry
for equality by a population shunted to the margins of mainstream society.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, head of the Socialist group
in the National Assembly, the lower chamber, said the law was a political
and educational aberration.
"Today we can repair this mistake, because
it is a mistake," he said on France-Inter radio before the debate.
"Our history, if we want it to be shared
by French citizens as a whole, must recognize both glorious achievements,
but also the darker moments with lucidity, without there being an official
history decided by parliamentarians."
Lawmakers from the governing conservative
UMP party passed the law in February when only a handful of deputies were
present. It came under full public scrutiny only in recent months with a petition
by history teachers. It was denounced at a recent annual meeting of historians.
The language that offends stipulates that
"school programs recognize in particular the positive character of the
French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has
equated the law with "mental blindness," and said it smacks of revisionism.
Algeria's Parliament called it a "grave precedent."
The measure threatens to delay the signing
of a friendship treaty between France and Algeria, which once was an integral
part of France.
Only in 1999 did France finally call the Algerian
conflict a "war." Before then, France referred only to operations
to "maintain order."
