oecuménisme" "
The President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac has made a “solemn” appeal to the nation to condemn the worrying spate of acts of intolerance against Jewish and Moslem minorities. Chirac was speaking at Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the Upper Loire, on 8 July. It is a place charged with historical memories both for French Protestants and Jews, who at different times have found refuge and safety there. “Still today said the President acts of deplorable violence stain our country. They are acts of discrimination, anti-Semitism and racism of every type. They strike our Jewish fellow-citizens who have been present in our country since time immemorial. They strike our Moslem fellow-citizens who have chosen to work and live in France. They occur in our schools; they threaten our children. They profane our places of worship, our dearest symbols”. The President pledged that the perpetrators of these acts of aggression “will be judged and suffer all the rigour of our laws. May the victims of these acts Chirac added know that the whole nation is at their side”. He then made an appeal to the nation: “In response to the risk of indifference and passivity in daily life, I solemnly appeal to every Frenchman and Frenchwoman to be vigilant and react with indignation and repudiation. In response to the growth of intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and rejection of differences, I ask them to remember a past that is still close to us, and remain faithful to the lessons of history. I urge them always to remind their children of the fatal danger of fanaticism, exclusion and the extremism”. The president of the Protestant Federation of France, Jean-Arnold de Clermont, associated himself with Chirac’s appeal: he too urged the French people to “resistance” and “a general growth in awareness”: “we need to resist the indifference of our fellow-citizens, those who by weakness and insensibility allow racism to grow at their side”.
