Macron under pressure over reparatory justice for France’s role in slave trade
Emmanuel Macron is under pressure to open discussions on reparatory justice for France’s role in hundreds of years of enslavement of African people as he
Emmanuel Macron is under pressure to open discussions on reparatory justice for France’s role in hundreds of years of enslavement of African people as he makes a key speech on the legacy of slavery. On Thursday the French president will celebrate the 25th anniversary of France becoming the first country in the world to recognise the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity in a 2001 law brought by Christiane Taubira, a former MP from French Guiana. Macron’s office said “the memorial work around the question of slavery and the slave trade is a permanent project of recognition for the president”. As he enters his final months as president, however, demands are growing on Macron to launch a formal discussion process on how to address the legacies of enslavement in French society. France is facing a political row over racism in politics, the media and society, and the far right is polling high in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election. The sense of urgency comes amid anger in France that its representatives – alongside those of the UK and other European nations – abstained in March’s UN vote to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and call for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs”.
View image in fullscreen Emmanuel Macron’s office said: ‘The memorial work around the question of slavery and the slave trade is a permanent project of recognition for the president.’ Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Victorin Lurel, a Guadeloupe senator, wrote in an open letter to Macron that France had committed a “moral, historic, diplomatic and political mistake” in abstaining and had “tarnished” its image internationally. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, France was the third largest trafficker of enslaved people across the Atlantic and Indian oceans among the European nations, after Portugal and Britain. France was responsible for kidnapping and enslaving about 13% of the estimated 13 to 17 million men, women and children forced from Africa across the Atlantic. Among those calling for a process of dialogue in France is Dieudonné Boutrin, who heads the International Federation of Descendants of the History of Slavery and is a descendant of enslaved Africans who were trafficked from Benin to the French Caribbean island of Martinique. Boutrin works alongside Pierre Guillon de Princé, a descendant of 18th-century slave-ship owners in Nantes, who last month made a formal apology for his ancestors’ role in transporting about 4,500 enslaved Africans to the Caribbean, at least 200 of whom died at sea.
The BriefWire