Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

ELECTION

Strauss-Kahn trouble fails to boost Sarkozy

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's re-election hopes have failed to improve despite the sex scandal that felled his main challenger Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a new poll showed Sunday.

Published: 13 June 2011 17:29 CEST

The IFOP poll published in the weekly Journal du Dimanche showed Sarkozy winning 22 percent of first-round voting intentions, trailing behind the leading opposition Socialist contender Francois Hollande with 26 percent.

Until mid-May, the favourite to win the 2012 French election was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK, the Socialist who led the IMF until New York police arrested him on sexual assault and attempted rape charges.

Sunday’s poll showed that Hollande, a former leader of the Socialist Party, had gained three points since IFOP’s last survey and moved firmly into the lead.

It showed the right-wing president was still facing a threat from Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party.

Le Pen would score 21 percent to Sarkozy’s 22 in the first round of voting if Hollande runs for the Socialists, and would beat him 22 percent to 21.5 if Socialist leader Martine Aubry ran instead of Hollande, the poll showed.

“Although the DSK affair has flummoxed the public and sparked a burst of feminism, the French do not seem to have decided, at least for now, to offer Nicolas Sarkozy a second presidential term,” the newspaper wrote.

France’s former president Jacques Chirac, who was Sarkozy’s mentor before falling out with him, surprised journalists on Saturday by saying he would vote for Hollande. He later insisted he was joking.

France's Uyghurs say Xi visit a 'slap' from Macron

Xi is due to make a state visit to France on Monday and Tuesday.

Dilnur Reyhan, the founder of the European Uyghur Institute and a French national, said she and others were “angry” the Chinese leader was visiting.

“For the Uyghur people — and in particular for French Uyghurs — it’s a slap from our president, Emmanuel Macron,” she said, describing the Chinese leader as “the executioner of the Uyghur people”.

Beijing stands accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention facilities across the Xinjiang region.

Campaigners and Uyghurs overseas have said an array of abuses take place inside the facilities, including torture, forced labour, forced sterilisation and political indoctrination.

A UN report last year detailed “credible” evidence of torture, forced medical treatment and sexual or gender-based violence — as well as forced labour — in the region.

But it stopped short of labelling Beijing’s actions a “genocide”, as the United States and some other Western lawmakers have done.

Beijing consistently denies abuses and claims the allegations are part of a deliberate smear campaign to contain its development.

It says it is running vocational training centres in Xinjiang which have helped to combat extremism and enhance development.

Standing beside Reyhan at a press conference in Paris, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who presented herself as having spent three years in a detention camp, said she was “disappointed”.

“I am asking the president to bring up the issue of the camps with China and to firmly demand they be shut down,” she said.

Human Rights Watch on Friday urged Macron during the visit to “lay out consequences for the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity and deepening repression”.

“Respect for human rights has severely deteriorated under Xi Jinping’s rule,” it said.

“His government has committed crimes against humanity… against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, adopted draconian legislation that has erased Hong Kong’s freedoms, and intensified repression of government critics across the country.”

“President Macron should make it clear to Xi Jinping that Beijing’s crimes against humanity come with consequences for China’s relations with France,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch

Url copied to clipboard!