Coverage of the footfall World Cup currently in progress in Germany could hardly have been lacking in the press in recent days. Richard Meng of the Frankfurter Rundschau (12/6) comments as follows: “ World Cups like this are really entertaining. Hundreds of thousands of visitors are taking to the streets to celebrate the matches together: in the stadiums, in front of mega-screens, in pubs and restaurants, or in private parties. A slogan has truly become a feeling: the world really has come to pay us a visit. The best possible atmosphere was created in the first weekend of the World Cup: peaceful, non aggressive, and international. The enthusiasm is contagious. The country is beginning to enjoy its state of emergency. And in doing so, it is even learning something”. […] “ The State too is on show at the present time, especially with the conduct of its police. In this respect, too, the start of the World Cup has been a success. For the low-key, placid and even sometimes festive way in which the policemen have so far acted could become, it too, the visiting card of a civil and happy country. For once the security forces are acting differently: not as forces that prevent, but that on the contrary, if possible, help to promote the good humour. Normally this is not considered a German speciality. So, let’s hope things stay like this. There are those, however, who could disturb a world event like this. But if this fine atmosphere is to persist, depends on many. They must no longer be deprived of the celebration of football: irrespective of who wins or who loses“. The World Cup provides the French Catholic daily La Croix (14/06) with a cue to reflect on the educational value of football for the young, “school of life” and a way for boys to meet and reinforce their male identity” suggests Nathalie Lacube. “Understanding that one forms part of a team, and that if one does not play with others one gets nowhere, is one of the virtues of the football”, which also has the advantage of “channelling aggressive impulses, like all sports” and “obliging the young players to respect the rules and the referee”. That goes for the playing of football; but even the matches seen together with one’s parents, usually fathers, “while the female component of the family is occupied with other things”, means, concludes Lacube, “sharing the same emotions and passions” and creating “a very strong sense of complicity that may help to maintain contact also in difficult moments” of adolescence. The suicide of three prisoners in the US prison camp at Guantanamo, in Cuba, has re-ignited controversies about human rights violations and is given ample coverage in the European press. “Close down Guantanamo” is the eloquent headline of the editorial in Le Monde (13/06) which calls the prison “a black stain in the democratic world” and “a judicial nonsense”. “The USA remains deaf” to the fact that the camp represents “a flagrant violation of international law and human rights”, and “the Bush administration” demonstrates “contempt even for its own Supreme Court which in June 2004 asked it to authorise the detainees at Guantanamo to defend themselves before an American civil court, and for public opinion… where a growing number of voices are denouncing the conditions inside the prison”. The paper expresses the hope that European leaders “would no longer attend a high-level meeting with the Americans without demanding the closing down” of the prison. The same view is taken by Jean-Cristophe Ploquin who comments as follows in the pages of La Croix (13/06): “ The European States, active partners in the campaign against terrorism”, cannot be disinterested in “a delayed action bomb that is helping to fuel hatred against the West in the Muslim world. Many have given proof of deplorable weakness by authorising the transit of CIA secret flights transporting detainees. The UN special rapporteur against torture Manfred Nowak is pressing the European Union to ask Bush, on the occasion of the EU-USA summit on 21 June, to close down the camp”. “And this – concludes Ploquin – would be a proof of good sense”. “What’s really monstrous – comments the British paper The Guardian (12/06) – is not the way in which the prisoners are physically treated… but the abandonment of legal procedures by part of a nation that built its own identity on constitutional rights”. “Decommissioning Guantanamo, where 460 detainees are still being held, won’t be easy. But moral sense and justice demand that this should happen. We hope that the US Supreme Court will succeed in doing so. However – concludes the British daily – that doesn’t prevent others from denouncing this betrayal of democratic principles”.
