Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Former French President Hollande criticizes Macron, warns he has ‘not retired’ from politics

Former French president Francois Hollande said on Wednesday he has not turned his back on politics, after criticizing his successor and former protégé in the Elysee Palace, Emmanuel Macron.

Published: 24 August 2017 10:12 CEST
Former French President Hollande criticizes Macron, warns he has 'not retired' from politics
Macron and Hollande pictured at their handover ceremony. Photo: AFP

“Even when I decided… not to stand (for re-election) I had said I would not retire from political life,” the Socialist Hollande, 63, told TV5 Monde television.

The former president on Tuesday said the 39-year-old Macron should not “demand needless sacrifices from the French”.

Macron, elected in May, has come under fire for budget and public spending cuts.

The former investment banker launched his presidential bid in August last year, promising to overcome France's entrenched right-left divide.

Hollande had plucked Macron from virtual obscurity to make him his financial advisor before naming him economy minister in 2014.

READ ALSO: How Emmanuel Macron went from top of the class to president of France

The former president on Tuesday questioned Macron's moves to “make the job market more flexible than we already have.”

He issued the warning as Macron's Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud began meetings with union leaders over labour reforms, an issue that sparked a series of sometimes violent protests across France last year.

On May 14th, the day Macron was inaugurated, Hollande said of his own political future “you should never say never in life”.

Even if “the temptation to intervene can be great,” Hollande said, he did not want to be a “backseat driver” during the first days and weeks of the Macron presidency.

Hollande had record low approval ratings after failing to make good on his pledge to rein in unemployment, which stagnated at around ten percent throughout most of his five years in office.

He decided in December not to stand for re-election.

The Socialists' candidate Benoit Hamon finished a humiliating fifth place as voters abandoned the former ruling party, crippled by deep ideological divisions.

OPINION: Hollande doesn't deserve to go down in history as 'France's most unpopular president'

POLITICS

France’s Uyghurs say Xi visit a ‘slap’ from Macron

Uyghurs in France on Friday said President Emmanuel Macron welcoming his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping next week was tantamount to "slapping" them.

Published: 4 May 2024 15:23 CEST
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

SHOW COMMENTS