Window on Eurasia

French Minority Policies Show Moscow What Not to Do, Muslims Say

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 6, 2006 – France, “one of the few countries of the world which does not recognize ethnic minorities officially,” offers some important, if largely negative, lessons to Moscow and the minorities of the Russian Federation, according to a group of Muslim analysts in Nizhniy Novgorod.

The Amal Analytic Center this week issued the third in its series of
articles on the ways in which European countries deal with their
minorities. Earlier, its scholars published studies on Great Britain
and Spain. This week’s offering concerns France
[http://www.islamnn.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1234].

Instead of focusing as many might have expected on how Paris has dealt
with its estimated five million Muslim immigrants from Africa and the
Middle East, the Amal Center considered instead how the French have
dealt with the Bretons, Corsicans and Basques.

The reason for doing so, these analysts argue, is that the French
government policies the Muslim immigrants encountered a few years ago
have been part of that government’s approach to indigenous minorities
“for centuries.” Moreover, Russia’s Muslims can examine the
experiences of these groups in a more detached way.

The Bretons, the Amal Center notes, are “the largest ethnic minority
of France and one of the largest in Western Europe” – although at
the present time only about 250,000 Bretons speak their national
Celtic-based language in addition to French, the official national
language.

Long an agricultural and fishing center, the Breton region experienced
dramatic growth just before World War I, but that renaissance was cut
short by major losses during that conflict, even though the Breton
national movement continued to develop, and some Bretons fought in
Ireland against the British.

During World War II, the German occupiers attenpted to exploit Breton
nationalism, something that discredited that set of ideas in the minds
of many other French citizens. But by 1951, a revived Breton movement
secured approval from Paris for a one hour a week elective course in
the language in local schools.

Affected by the rise of nationalism elsewhere, the Bretons also became
more active in the 1960s and 1970s, the Amal Center notes, reporting
that in 1971, the Revolutionary Army of Brittany was established. It
had as its goal “the independence of Brittany.

And today, “if the Alliance for the Independence of Brittany were
able to participate in elections” – something it is not currently
allowed to do – the Amal Center suggests tha as many as 17 percent of the
populace in that region would vote for its candidates.

But the Amal analysts argue that the future for this movement may be
even brighter than those numbers suggest: the French population in the
region is aging, while the Breton population is getting on average
younger. And they say that among members of the Alliance, 65 percent
are young people.

“The causes for the growth of Breton autonomy and separatism lie
exclusively in the self-consciousness of the people and not in
economics,” a conclusion that is all the more obvious, the Muslim
scholars argue, because “in recent years, the situation of Brittany
has markedly improved.”

The situation in Corsica is very different, the Nizhniy Novgorod
scholars say, a product of both history – Corsica did not become part
of France until 1796 – and ethnic mentality – the mountaineers of
the island of Corsica are very different than the farmers and fisherman
of Brittany.

Various groups on the island, including the Front for the National
Liberation of Corsica, have called for independence, and some have mounted terrorist attacks against French institutions.

In response, the French parliament in 2001 offered the Corsicans the
opportunity to vote on autonomy, but in 2003, the residents of the
island – including many relatively recently arrived from the mainland
-- voted this measure down.

Nonetheless, this offer by Paris to Corsica has had consequences –
first and foremost in Brittany, where one of the leaders of the
Alliance for the Independence of Brittany pointedly asked “why don’t they
[in Paris] consider us a nation?”

The Muslim scholars then considered the situation of Basques of France.
Unlike their co-ethnics in Spain, the Basques north of the Pyrenees
have not been subject to massive persecution, but “despite this,” the
Amal Center says, they support the ETA and hide its “terrorists in
this own lands.”

Thus, the center says, “the experience of the ethnic minorities of
France is both unacceptable and inapplicable to conditions of the
Russian Federation: too many negative factors influence its
experience” with these minorities, but the Amal analysts suggest,
there are nonetheless some important lessons to be learned from it.

In recent years, they note, “even a country like unitarian France was
forced toward policies of regionalism and autonomy in order to reduce
the social pressure [that has been building up] among small ethnic
communities.”

And they conclude, “bitter experience is also experience, all the
more so for our country where ever more often are heard demands for
liquidating national republics and establishing new administrative
borders. If we are smart, then let us learn from the mistakes of others
and not from our own.”

Latest Window on Eurasia stories | Religion Archive | Islam in Russia and CIS Archive | Orthodox Church in Russia and CIS Archive | All Window on Eurasia Stories Archive |