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France's selective justice: Why did Paris ban Corsicans from their mother tongue?

13 March 2023 16:26 (UTC +04:00)

For some time, France has been trying to interfere in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan in various ways, as an example of the Karabakh issue. Having presented himself as a mediator within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group for almost 30 years, Paris has now removed his mask and openly expressed his sympathy for the separatist sentiments of Karabakh Armenians.

And French politicians are trying to cover up this "sympathy" which lies behind dirty money, corruption income, electoral interests, with human values and principles of humanism.

However, the previous week's court decision on the island of Corsica, which is considered French territory, once again exposed how Paris exploits these values.

The decision in the question was made by the Bastia court last week. According to the decision, the use of the Corsican language, the mother tongue of the islanders, in the debates of the Corsican Assembly was considered unconstitutional.

It should be noted that Corsican which has similarities with the Italian language is the mother tongue of 150000 people living on the island and it is categorized as an endangered language by UNESCO.

In addition to the language issues, the Bastia court saw local rules, which are base of the Corsican people’s existence, as a violation of the constitution.

The decision of the Court was accepted on the claimed field of the prefect of Corsica, a high representative of the French Central Government on the island.

This decision caused strong protests from the local people, the court verdict was seriously criticized by the island’s pro-autonomy politics.

According to France 24, the island's executive council president Gilles Simeoni, and Corsican Assembly president Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis said on their joint statement that "this decision amounts to stripping Corsican parliament members of the right to speak their language during debates".

"Accepting this state of affairs is unthinkable for us," they said in a joint statement, announcing an appeal against the verdict.

Pro-independence party Core in Fronte tweeted, in Corsican, that it considered the verdict "shameful".

The boss of the "Party of the Corsican Nation", Jean-Christophe Angelini, tweeted that the decision "sounds to us like an insult", also calling it "an injustice and a disgrace".

In fact, this is a continuation of France's policy of assimilating Corsicans whose language is in danger of disappearing, evicting them from the island, and trying to break the resistance against it by emptying the island, and this policy has been carried out systematically for more than a century. For instance, during the I World War, the vast majority of the island's youth were recruited into the army and sent to the front. Despite these young people playing an exceptional role in the victory of France, the agriculture of the island suffered a serious blow, and the labor force decreased sharply. The number of islanders' losses per population is also twice that of mainland France. Additionally, the economic policy implemented by France destroys the local export of the island, forcing the impoverished inhabitants to move to France and America. In the middle of the last century, underground atomic bomb tests were conducted on the island, and the inhabitants were forced to migrate again.

This is the very France that supports the Karabakh separatists, motivates them, and openly and secretly supports them. If France is true to the values it talks about, then it should first focus on the island of Corsica, because the history of the struggle for freedom of the Corsicans does not have 30 years of history like the Armenian separatism in Karabakh, but goes back hundreds of years.

Thus, the selective justice of Paris, which tries to behave like the master of European nations, makes it ridiculous.