Word: besson
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...must reaffirm the values of national identity and pride in being French," Eric Besson, the Minister for Immigration and National Identity, said as he announced the three-month series of discussions on Nov. 2. "This debate doesn't scare me. I even find it passionate." Besson says it's important for an increasingly diverse France to define its essential unifying values and reclaim a national pride and patriotism that the National Front co-opted long ago for its own xenophobic purposes. (See pictures of Bastille Day celebrations...
...high-profile political scandals in recent months, such as the accusations of nepotism surrounding a bid by President Nicolas Sarkozy's son to attain a public post and the allegations that the French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand paid for sex with boys in Thailand. Besson was also highly criticized himself for ordering an illegal refugee camp near Calais to be razed in September, and three Afghans be deported back to their war-torn country. "Shaken by a series of political scandals that have thrust the FN back onto the stage, the government is again serving...
...ERIC BESSON, French Immigration Minister, on the Sept. 22 dismantling of a makeshift refugee camp in the northern city of Calais. Known as "the jungle," it housed hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis...
...year-old from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, who said his father sold a piece of land to pay smugglers to take him and his cousin, also 12, to Europe, after Taliban fighters had repeatedly tried to press the boys into fighting with them. French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said on Tuesday that the 132 children arrested would be housed in special immigration youth centers until officials determined whether they qualified for asylum. In the camp on Monday Jabar described how he and his cousin hid in container trucks for six weeks across Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, before...
...Before the police cleared the Calais camp on Tuesday, Immigration Minister Besson had failed to persuade Britain to take the men as refugees. That is a contrast to 2002, when Britain agreed to take 1,200 of the 1,500 immigrants living in a Red Cross center in Sangatte, a suburb of Calais. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was Interior Minister at the time, shut the center, saying it would stop immigrants from converging in Calais. (See pictures of Nicolas Sarkozy...