Pave: Black Pay III

Le jour 249 de Sarko

Mieux vaut tard que jamais. ... Moi j'en suis fier et heureux.

[Better late than never. ... Me I am proud and happy.]

Hamlaoui Mékachéra,
ancien ministre délégué aux Anciens Combattants
(former Minister Delegate for Veterans’ Affairs),
shrugging off a 47-year injustice with a pat on the back
September 27, 2006 (infra)

CROIX DE I.O.U.
Huh? Uh, Thank You, Mr. France

The poster text reads (top to bottom, left to right):

Au Ministère de la Défense et l'Office national des anciens combattants

[To the Minister of Defense and the National Office of Veterans Affairs]

DANGER ÉGAL
SACRIFICE ÉGAL

COULEUR DIFFÉRENTE
PENSION DIFFÉRENTE

47 ANS D'INJUSTICE

[SAME DANGER
SAME SACRIFICE

DIFFERENT COLOR
DIFFERENT PENSION

47 YEARS OF INJUSTICE]

LA FRANCE décide, par la Loi de finances du 26 décembre 1959, de geler au niveau d’alors les pensions versées aux vétérans coloniaux.

[FRANCE decides, in the Finance Act of December 26, 1959, to freeze pensions at the current level paid to colonial veterans.]

LE MINISTÈRE DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS annonce, 27 septembre 2006, un alignement des pensions des vétérans coloniaux sur celles des soldats français dès le 1er janvier 2007.

TOUTEFOIS cette mesure n’est pas rétroactive.

[THE MINISTRY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS announces, September 27, 2006, an alignment of colonial veterans' pensions with those of French soldiers from January 1, 2007.

HOWEVER this measure is not retroactive.]

We recently saw the film Indigènes (2006, inexplicably retitled Days of Glory for distribution in English) written and directed by Rachid Bouchareb. It is perhaps not as good as its admirers would have it, but it is hardly as bad as its critics pronounce. To critics who say it is a clichéd war moive, we would point out that war movies are a genre and a genre is foremost a collection of clichés. Not surprisingly, a movie in a particular genre subscribes to that genre's clichés. This complaint is usually made in poorly written phoned-in movie reviews.

As a war movie Indigènes struck us as strangely quiet. The battle scenes,* the liberation of France, the war itself, are the least interesting things going on. What is interesting here is the colonial Maghrébin fitting an idea of himself to an idea of France. These are not today's murderous mujahadeen plotting a world caliphate. For the most part these are men of quiet principle, patriots inflamed by the advertised French cause, infatuated with distant France.

M. Bouchareb leaves enough room for the humanity of the self-occupied Metropolitan French and the pied-noirs, the better to lift their clumsy racism from today's faint-away racial slights. The worst bigots in the movie are at a remove, either clueless military administrators or distant bureaucrats. We don't know if the actors playing French officers act or merely draw on some reserve of national obtuseness, but they play their parts well.

Bernard Blancan as the pied-noir sergent-chef Roger Martinez epitomizes French ideals mired in prejudices and the difficulties of command. With a foot in both worlds, the Maghreb and France, he belongs wholly to neither. Opposite him is Sami Bouajila as Algerian Corporal Abdelkader, the movie's heart and conscience. Like many a working idealist, he makes it up as he goes along, trying to find the practical fit to what he feels must be right. These performances are near perfect.

We liked Indigènes. Maybe you will too. But M. Bouchareb is making more than a movie, he is making a human argument for justice. The movie ends 60 years later at the military cemetery in Alsace where the sole survivor visits his fallen comrades' gravesides. The camera follows him home -- a bus ride, a face in a crowd, a low-rent flat. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he wearily removes his shoes. He drops his hands in the well of his lap and stares at the nothing before him. This decent man, this extraordinary man, forgotten in the France he gave his all to liberate. It breaks the heart.

A brief text over a shot of the Alsatian cemetery details the colonial veteran's plight. [Pause.] Which brings us round to our post.

In 1959 France passed a law** to freeze the annuities of military pensioners of colonies about to become independent. It was known as la cristallisation, as if it were a sort of light frost, as if some day it would melt away. But France never had any intention of letting the frost melt away. France's position was if a colony wanted to be free of France, well, good riddance, France would be free of further obligations beyond the independence of the state and, by extension, any of its citizens with whom France had contracted separately. Indexed benefits of enlistment in her armies and service in her colonial administration became fixed. If you were a decolonized pensioner it would forever be 1959. If you were the widow of a decolonized pensioner, France gave you nothing.

In 1996 sergent-chef Amadou Diop, a Senegalese veteran with 22 years' service in the French army, sued the French state for pension arrears. In 2001 the Conseil d’Etat, France's highest administrative court, ruled in Mr. Diop's favor and found the 1959 law in violation of §I, Article 14 of the Convention Européenne des Droits de l'Homme. Justice delayed came too late for Mr. Diop, who had since died.

The government resisted the ruling, treating it as a decision in an individual case and not as common law. If veterans wanted their due, they could sue the state like Mr. Diop. Veterans organizations immediately began filing suits. The government's losing strategy soon gave way to tepid remedies in law, remedies with intentionally restrictive or complicated procedures meant to stall and to frustrate applicants. When stronger remedies were sought, the government argued that justice was served by purchasing power, not by honoring the contractual terms under which a veteran had enlisted. M. Mékachéra explains:

Nous ne voudrions pas qu'en opérant une distribution nominale des droits de chacun l'on arrive à une iniquité qui frapperait alors les Français métropolitains.

Si, par exemple, un ressortissant sénégalais, vietnamien ou algérien, avec un taux d'invalidité équivalent à celui de ses camarades français à Paris, peut se procurer 10 kilos de sucre, alors qu'un autre peut s'en procurer 100 kilos, ce n'est pas équitable. C'est donc le pouvoir d'achat qui est important et non pas la distribution nominale, dont on veut nous faire croire qu'elle représente l'égalité.

... Nous n'avons donc pas de problème de conscience. Une équité parfaite a été établie, en s'appuyant sur la grille de parité du pouvoir d'achat de l'ONU.

[While linking a nominal distribution of the rights of each, we would not want to arrive at an iniquity that would then hit the metropolitan {scil., European} French.

If, for example, a Senegalese, Vietnamese or Algerian national, with a disability rate equivalent to that of his French comrades in Paris, can get 10 kilos of sugar, whereas another can get 100 kilos, it is not equitable. It is the purchasing power then that is important and not the nominal distribution, which one would have us believe represents equality.

... Thus we do not have a problem of conscience. A perfect equity has been established based on the UN's parity schedule of purchasing power.]

That was M. Mékachéra in March of 2006. Two months later on May 25, M. Bouchareb's film screens at Cannes. September 5, Jack Chirac views the film and is moved.*** September 27, coinciding with the national release of Indigènes -- and four months after M. Mékachéra declares the government's perfect equity and clear conscience -- the government announces the alignment of decolonized pensions with French pensions.

ANCIENS COMBATTANTS: LA FRANCE REVALORISE LES PENSIONS
Il n'y aura plus de différence

[EX-SERVICEMEN: FRANCE REVALUES PENSIONS
There Will Be No More Difference]

28 Septembre 2006 (SaphirNews.com) -Le gouvernement français va revaloriser les retraites et les pensions d'invalidité des vétérans coloniaux, qui "percevront exactement en euros ce que perçoivent les nationaux français" a annoncé mercredi le ministre délégué aux Anciens combattants, Hamlaoui Mekachera.

"Il n'y aura plus de différence dans ces deux prestations qui sont la retraite des combattants et la pension militaire d'invalidité entre les ressortissants de ces pays et les nationaux français", a-t-il précisé.

Cette mesure ne sera toutefois pas rétroactive: un rattrapage "n'est pas d'actualité pour l'instant", a déclaré le ministre délégué aux Anciens combattants.

[The French government will revalorize the retirement and disablility pensions of colonial veterans, who "will receive exactly in euros what the French nationals receive," Hamlaoui Mekachera, deputy minister for veterans, announced on Wednesday.

"There will be no more difference in these two payments, the service retirement and the military disability pension, between the nationals of these countries and French nationals", he said.

However, this measurement will not be retroactive: catching up "is not on the agenda for now", declared the deputy minister for veterans.

We applaud M. Bouchareb's movie for accomplishing in less than a year what gratitude, decency, and justice together could not move French governments to do in 40+ years.

The revalorization was calculated as of January 1, 2007, but we didn't see any announcements of its effective implementation until April, and only one, and that in a press release from the French embassy in Morocco.

The French government is ponying up €110M/year for partial justice when €1.83B+ is needed for a full measure of justice for the surviving veterans and their families. Meanwhile, France continues to run out the clock on the ancient veterans. Perhaps once there are only a handful left, perhaps when it is cheap enough, perhaps France will see her way clear to make the survivors whole. Final justice -- it should make for nice headlines.

Other posts in this series can be found here and here. (Our earlier posts add 10 years to the injustice. We apologize for our poor arithmetic.)

------------------------------------
* There are few battle scenes, and we did not find them convincing. But the big one is especially marred by the cinematic expedient of the one-bullet-kill. Every German who takes a bullet obligingly dies -- Bang! -- on the spot. In the head. In the chest. In a shoulder. In a foot. Anywhere. Bang! 100% dead. One wonders how they ever took France in the first place.

*** «Jacques, il faut faire quelque chose !» L'émotion de Bernadette Chirac après la projection privée du film Indigènes, le 5 septembre, en présence de Jamel Debbouze et Rachid Bouchareb, a convaincu le président de la République qu'il fallait «aller plus loin» pour améliorer la situation des anciens combattants coloniaux.

PFFT (What is this?): 1959 kiss-off 4 | Cheap French justice better than no justice 1 | Iniquity of purchasing power windfall 0 | Rayonnement français 1