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POLITICS

Ex French president Hollande marries actress Julie Gayet in quiet ceremony

After a romance that made headlines around the world when it was revealed in 2014, ex-president François Hollande has married actress Julie Gayet at a low-key ceremony in his political fiefdom in central France.

Ex French president Hollande marries actress Julie Gayet in quiet ceremony
France's former President Francois Hollande and Julie Gayet, pictured in 2021. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The news was announced to La Montagne newspaper by the mayor of Tulle, Bernard Combes, with a picture of the couple showing the groom in a suit and his bride in a white dress climbing the stairs of the local town hall.

They married Saturday “in a private ceremony,” the mayor’s office in the central Correze region told the paper.

Little was revealed about the guest list beyond the presence of French singer Benjamin Biolay who worked with Gayet on a film in 2021.

Hollande, who has never married before, had an affair with Gayet while president and in a relationship with journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who was France’s de facto first lady at the time.

In January 2014, French glossy magazine Closer published bombshell photographs of Hollande arriving for a tryst with Gayet on a scooter at an apartment near his official residence in the heart of Paris.

The images, accompanied by a story replete with salacious details about bodyguards being dispatched to buy croissants for the pair in the morning, dealt a severe blow to Hollande’s credibility.

Trierweiler went on to write a best-selling tell-all memoir that recounted how she tried to commit suicide in the presidential bedroom after the media revelations.

Hollande has four children from his relationship with long-term former partner Segolene Royal, a one-time rival in the Socialist party.

Gayet has two sons with former husband Santiago Amigorena, an Argentinian screenwriter and producer she divorced in 2006.

The 50-year-old — who celebrated her landmark birthday the day before Saturday’s wedding — remained a low-key presence throughout the latter part of Hollande’s difficult time in office.

The couple agreed to their first joint photo session only in 2018 once Hollande had left office, having ended his five-year term in power with record low approval ratings.

In a rare interview the same year, she described Hollande’s time as leader as a period of “crazy violence” which included a series of jihadist attacks that cost hundreds of lives.

“I tried to give energy to the president, to take care of him, to be there to listen,” she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

“Since I met him, it’s given me wings,” added the star of Netflix drama “The Perfect Mother” who is an increasingly influential film producer. “I love his way of thinking, of being, his humour.”

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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.

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

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