2023-09-20 04:00:35
While three million students are returning to French universities these days, the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, on orders from the Elysée, is instructing the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and that of culture to suspend all academic, scientific and cultural cooperation with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Without even wanting to mention Guinea, Chad, Gabon, or the Central African Republic, for which Paris has not deemed it useful to suspend its academic, scientific and cultural cooperation, we can wonder why researchers, students, cultural actors and artists from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are thus targeted by a suspension of entry visas to France.
Researchers, academics, students and artists are the first victims of authoritarian regimes, while freedom of expression and critical thinking shrink in these countries in crisis. Does France not want to hear what Malian, Burkinabé and Nigerien intellectuals and artists have to say? Should the tradition of welcoming intellectuals and artists, and the cultural exception that France prides itself on, be brutally flouted?
The irrationality of a policy
Intellectuals and artists have in common that they are transmitters of shared knowledge and emotions. They lead us to where the individual, even the intimate, and the collective come together to build a common history and invent the future. Knowledge and culture are what connect us to each other and make us human.
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It all began, it seems, on May 24, 2021, with the second coup d’état in Mali, which put an end to the difficultly negotiated transition process with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ), for the benefit of Colonel Assimi Goïta, new head of state. This coup was accompanied by a change in Mali’s strategic alliance, which then called on Russia.
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On February 17, 2022, France decided to withdraw its forces from Mali, leading the host country to terminate the defense agreement with France on May 2. On November 16, Paris ceased its public development aid to Mali. A similar process then begins with Burkina Faso, then Niger. On September 30, 2022, Burkina Faso experienced a second military coup in less than eight months, before in turn ending the defense agreement with France on January 23.
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