What is overwhelming with journalists is that you always have to talk to them about yourself. Are you that interesting? On the videoconference screen, Hervé Drévillon displays courteous skepticism when we mention the sources of his vocation as a historian of military action. Difficult, for example, not to seek an echo with the profession of his father, worker – civilian – in naval aeronautics on military bases, in Dakar, where was born the future author of Blood tax (Tallandier, 2005), and Lorient, where he spent his youth.

Years of rubbing shoulders with soldiers, seeing from the inside this reality of the army to which he will devote so much work that has contributed to renewing the genre: it seems almost too good. It is : ?There was this link with the army, indeed, he replies. But he did not have a great influence on the sequel. You know, I got into military history a lot later, after I got interested in something else. “

If we still want to understand what part of himself he was able to put in these years of research, than the book he has just published, To think and write the war, recapitulates, prolongs, redraws, further fueling the impetus from which they proceed, he immediately opens one of his files: that of General Pelet (1777-1858). There, the brief responses at the start of the conversation give way to an often endless stream. It is the others that are worth the trouble; they are enough to say what carries you. And the historian concludes his detailed portrait of the Napoleonic officer: ?It was when he was appointed, in 1830, under the July Monarchy, director of the war depot – the current historical service of the armies – that he formulated what has become my vital motto: ‘The military history is subject to the same laws and the same duties as general history. ? “

Unexplored areas

« Vitale », really ? Yes, and to measure to what extent is to give yourself a chance to get as close as possible to this historian’s life. Moreover, Hervé Drévillon was, between 2016 and 2020, research director in this same historical service. ?It has been a wonderful activity, he recounts. I had to stop because I was on the verge of burnout. But this was part of a tendency, within the military field, to openness to the university field, which helped to insert scientific approaches – the laws and duties of general history into the reflections of the army! -, and it was fascinating. “

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Unexplored areas

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All shots are allowed. This is the impression that the absurd rumor that animated social networks and media in mid-December can give: according to this fable, the first lady of France, Brigitte Macron, was originally a man, who would have been called Jean- Michel Trogneux, before changing sex and name.

At the origin of this gossip, a pseudo-investigation carried out by an Internet user close to the extreme right-wing and conspiratorial spheres, Natacha Rey, on behalf of a publication close to the essayist Alain Soral, Faits & Documents, retrace Release. The article was spotted in October by the conspiratorial blog Profession Gendarme, which, between articles about alleged pro-LGBT witchcraft classes in California schools, or how the Jewish people were “invented,” gives prominence to the rumor targeting Brigitte Macron. But it is the interview of Natacha Rey by a self-proclaimed medium, on YouTube, which really propels her theory from December 10.

In the process, the hashtag “#JeanMichelTrogneux” remains at the top of the most discussed subjects on Twitter for several days in a row, supported by various far-right circles, anti-Macron activists close to yellow vests and anti-vaccine activists. Several newspaper articles, amazed, begin to trace the origin of this improbable stink ball.

Americanization of intoxication

Beyond the rumor in itself, the episode reveals the fear of the French media world that the presidential election of 2022 could be parasitized, like the last two American presidential ones, by infamous conspiracy theories. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was accused of being involved in a sordid pedophile ring affair in connection with a Washington pizzeria (the “PizzaGate”). In 2020, many conspiratorial theories attributed to Joe Biden inappropriate behavior with children.

Read our file: QAnon: at the roots of the conspiracy theory that contaminates America

There is something deeply American in the transphobic story targeting Brigitte Macron. As recalled by the specialist in radical communities Tristan Mendès-France interviewed by Marianne, a similar accusation had touched Michelle Obama. For the rare people convinced of the veracity of this story, it illustrates the moral perversity and the decadent sexuality of the elites: in their logic, the first lady is presented as a child rapist pedophile, a recurring motif of the far-right complosphere. American, Christian and Puritanist.

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Americanization of intoxication

Read our file: QAnon: at the roots of the conspiracy theory that contaminates America

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Interview. Practiced by nearly 300 million people around the world, yoga is, for many of its followers, much more than a simple sporting activity. Addressing the totality of the being, it engages the body as much as the mind. Ysé Tardan-Masquelier directed Yoga. The encyclopedia (Albin Michel, 736 pages, 39 euros), a fascinating yoga saga which “Does not say how to do yoga, but how it was made, who invented and reinvented it over the course of a long history, how it permeated Indian culture and why it went global in the West ?, explains the specialist of the Indian world. Story of a success story which does not hide anything from the excesses, in particular marketing, of which yoga has sometimes become the object.

What does the word “yoga” mean?

In the Vedic texts, which constitute the original base of Indian traditions since they were composed approximately between the XV^e and the VIII^e century BC, this word refers to the action of hitching a horse to a chariot – in an epic context – or an animal to a cart to travel. It is a question of “putting under the yoke”, of “joining” energies in such a way that they agree on a unified path – “yoke”, “junction” and “yoga” moreover share the same etymology. .

“The word” yoga “will be associated with the idea of ??interior discipline, of the path of life”

This meaning very quickly became metaphorical. Thus, the poets of the Vedic hymns ?harness their thoughts? to compose the beautiful poem which will travel far and wide, reach fame and glory. Little by little, the word “yoga” will be associated with the idea of ??interior discipline, of the path of life. It is found in ancient Buddhism, Jainism and in the first texts of the Hindu tradition, in particular in the Bhagavad-Gita, au II^e century BC.

Does yoga really take root, as we often think, in time immemorial?

The historian cannot confirm this. At the most, it can go back to the period of construction which precedes the birth of yoga properly speaking, in the course of the I^is millennium BC. Some researchers have hypothesized an original indigenous form of yoga that dates back to two or three millennia BC. At present, we do not know.

What did yoga consist of in its origins?

In the Vedic period, that is to say at the end of II^e millennium BC, ascetics practiced fairly austere exercises – inverted positions or very long seated, combined with breathing exercises or fasting, for example. Although rare, the testimonies on these ascetics become more frequent in the centuries which follow, in particular at the time of the expedition of Alexander the Great (IV^e century BC), who is said to have encountered ascetics in India. Called “gymnosophists” – literally the “naked sages” – by the Greeks, they were able to sit for a very long time in direct sunlight, surrounded by fires increasing the temperature even further, or other heroic exercises.

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What does the word “yoga” mean?

“The word” yoga “will be associated with the idea of ??interior discipline, of the path of life”

Does yoga really take root, as we often think, in time immemorial?

What did yoga consist of in its origins?

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Lhe energy transition will require a considerable increase in investment. Production and storage of renewable energy, construction of smart electricity networks, decarbonisation of industry and transport, thermal renovation of buildings and homes, etc. The need for additional gross investment is estimated at 4% or 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year for thirty years. But at the same time, investments in fossil fuels will decrease, as is already the case: the need for additional net investment would then be of the order of 3 to 4 percentage points of GDP.

This enormous investment effort will only be possible if certain macroeconomic conditions are met. First of all, interest rates should stay low. The investments necessary for the energy transition have low financial returns; their efficiency comes from the benefits they bring (reduction of CO₂), but not their pure financial profitability. As long as interest rates are low, these investments are fundable. But this is no longer the case if interest rates go up.

Read the editorial of the “World”: Energy transition: getting out of urgency and expedients

Second point, if investment increases durably by 3 to 4 points of GDP and if the GDP remains unchanged, this would mean that consumption decreases durably by 3 to 4 points of GDP, the GDP being divided between investment and consumption. However, initially, the potential GDP (that which can be achieved with the existing capital and active population) will rather decrease than increase. Indeed, the energy transition will initially destroy capital and the jobs linked to this capital (in fossil fuels, the production of intermediate goods that consume large amounts of fossil fuels, the production of thermal cars, etc.).

Long term vision

If there is no overall increase in GDP, the drop in consumption will affect the poorest households and, if we want to help the latter, it will be even stronger for the middle classes. This decrease can occur either because households save more to invest in the energy transition (renovation of housing, joint acquisition of green electricity installations, etc.), or because the State finances investments through a tax increase. required.

We therefore see the need for more income, and therefore growth. To prevent the increase in investment translating into a fall in consumption, we therefore need more growth, not in the short term but in the long term, in potential growth, since the investment effort will have to last for a period of time. thirty years.

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Read the editorial of the “World”: Energy transition: getting out of urgency and expedients

Long term vision

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Nur attitude towards migrants represents a moral bankruptcy which shames France. Until when will we endure the hate speech of the extreme right, more and more shamelessly taken up by the classic right, towards foreigners? It is an insult to migrants who have fled poverty or oppression and believing that we find a haven of peace in our country, an insult to the 25% of French people whose parents or themselves come from an immigrant background, an insult to all. the inhabitants of the land of human rights, an insult to humanity, coming from the land of enlightenment and universalism!

These statements by the political class, as an echo, for electoral purposes, to a public opinion (of which nobody knows if it is in the majority or not) supposedly torn by fear and rejection of the other, distill a migrant ostracization poison. The generous and courageous decisions of Angela Merkel in 2015 are not enough to give a good conscience to Europe and, by trickle down, to France; no more than the exemplary field action of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of associations engaged in France in welcoming and supporting those who come to our doors does not succeed in correcting the fundamental evil that is eating away at us. since welcoming foreigners no longer constitutes one of the foundations of our collective morality.

Has the land of enlightenment and human rights forgotten that it was the first to establish as a universal moral the values ??of respect for each human person, their rights and freedoms, in particular to move, to flee violence or misery, and settle in a new country? Our country of which so many pediments pride themselves on words “Liberty, equality, fraternity” has he forgotten the third term of his motto?

A group of migrants leave the French coast for the United Kingdom aboard an inflatable boat on December 16.

This is not to be naive. The problems, economic, sociological and cultural, linked to the arrival of migrants in France, exist. And even if some studies show that the economic benefits of immigration, on the economic level, are generally much greater than the disadvantages generated, one cannot deny the difficulties encountered in many cases. The pockets of communitarianism, through a double phenomenon of exclusion (the self-exclusion of a community and the exclusion by those who do not belong to it), defeat the desire for integration which is the basis of our conception of citizenship. .

Integration will not happen without reaffirming our principles of unity of the republic, secularism, equality between men and women, and without giving even more resources to education. Underpaid jobs accepted by migrants (whether regular or not) drag down the labor market. And taking better care of foreigners also requires, for social justice, to redouble attention to many French people who are also in situations of feeling of abandonment or exclusion, material or psychological misery.

All these elements must be taken into account in a necessary political debate (that is to say addressing the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the question), humanist and realistic, which advances the legislative framework for the reception of migrants. . The xenophobic diatribes heard daily do not help move this debate forward. Worse, they indirectly (even sometimes directly) justify physical or moral violence against migrants.

One of the forms of justification for this violence often heard incriminates “The call for air” what would constitute the good reception conditions of foreigners in France and the flood of migrants that they would generate? Shame on those who make such claims! How dare to say that someone who is about to live several months of wandering in an unknown country, between fear, cold and hunger, the risk of drowning, violence, racketeering, sometimes rape or torture, who is ready to tear himself away from his family and social environment because his living conditions are quite simply untenable, would change his mind depending on the way in which he will be received in Europe?

The quantitative subject is elsewhere. Migration – all causes combined – concerns 260 million people around the world, today mainly between countries of the South. Climatologists and demographers agree that climate change will generate much greater population movements in the future. This is what we must prepare for. Erecting walls will no longer be just immoral. It will be ineffective. If the great replacement is a fantasy, we must, in the words of Martin Luther King, “Learn to live together as brothers, otherwise we will all die together like idiots”.

Migrants walk in a tunnel connecting Italy and France on December 11.

But back to today. A distinction must be made on the one hand between social, economic and cultural issues and the legislative framework that must deal with them, and on the other hand between humanitarian issues. Hateful speeches vis-à-vis migrants sterilize the debate on the first issues, which should be taken the time to organize in a calm atmosphere, and help not to deal with the second, which nevertheless constitute an absolute urgency. from the moment.

Who will dare to initiate a xenophile counter-discourse, at the height of our tradition of hospitality … and no doubt of our socio-economic intelligence? And, to start with the humanitarian emergency, who will dare to propose a real reception plan for migrants, if not generous, at least simply human? A plan which includes the contribution to a European policy distributing migrants between European countries (by renegotiating the Dublin agreements) and not letting men, women and children die between two borders.

A plan which defines a national policy sanctifying assistance at sea (the Mediterranean and the English Channel), reception in our ports, systematic accommodation in accommodation centers – more numerous – the right to work for applicants for asylum, the facilitation of administrative procedures, the framework of a benevolent dialogue with cultures sometimes far from our own, with other peoples who are brothers in humanity?

“France cannot accommodate all the misery in the world, but it can take its share”, said Michel Rocard. Let’s start with that. It’s our duty. It could be our wealth. It should be our pride.

Etienne Tricaud, Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), and Pierre-Marie Tricaud, Paris

The world

“France cannot accommodate all the misery in the world, but it can take its share”, said Michel Rocard. Let’s start with that. It’s our duty. It could be our wealth. It should be our pride.

Etienne Tricaud, Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), and Pierre-Marie Tricaud, Paris

The world

Author of Measurement and Excess of Cities (CNRS Edition 2020), the philosopher Thierry Paquot, delivers his conception of a city “Which spares places, people, the living”.

Has the pandemic shaken the dogma of the dense city?

Yes, even if it was not the particularly populated places that were the most affected by the Covid-19, but those where the relational intensity was important. Already, at the end of the XIX^e century, the density is denounced by hygienists, who associate it with promiscuity, overcrowding, poorly ventilated housing, and consider it responsible for the main urban plagues that are then tuberculosis, cholera, alcoholism and syphilis … Urban better living aims at an ecology of territories where other criteria are intertwined than the number of inhabitants per hectare.

Does the ?big is beautiful? come to the end of the race?

I hope so ! The “biggest” is rarely the most efficient, in all areas! The high-rise building crushes the pedestrian and creates an anxiety-provoking atmosphere, it is energy intensive and inurban and must be avoided. Much like the oversized mall, oversized airport that bloom in French metropolises and megalopolises around the world. There is an absurd fascination with these congested urban units, overconsuming soil, stressful, segregated, concrete, which have only a few days of food autonomy! It is urgent to reduce them and endow them with a joyful habitability, in sparing places, people, living things …

Read also Valence pedestrianized its squares at the request of residents

Does a sustainable city, making room for nature, go hand in hand with a sparsely populated city?

No city can meet environmental requirements on its own; we must favor a territorial approach, promote city / countryside complementarities, experiment with bioregions. Productivism has generated ?non-cities? and ?non-countryside?, just as it has made the territories more precarious after having made jobs more precarious. The bioregion – assembly of towns, villages, hamlets – will be based on decentralization, cooperation, self-management, solidarity and hospitality, from which, in all likelihood, a population which is certainly of great diversity, but limited in number.

Is there the right size for the city? A fair density?

No, there is no standard model to reproduce. Every territory is unique and requires, on a case-by-case basis, tailor-made and “doing with” the inhabitants and the living. The garden city, born over a hundred years ago, is, in my opinion, worth revisiting: it is on a “human scale” without being folded in on itself …

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Author of Measurement and Excess of Cities (CNRS Edition 2020), the philosopher Thierry Paquot, delivers his conception of a city “Which spares places, people, the living”.

Has the pandemic shaken the dogma of the dense city?

Does the ?big is beautiful? come to the end of the race?

Read also Valence pedestrianized its squares at the request of residents

Does a sustainable city, making room for nature, go hand in hand with a sparsely populated city?

Is there the right size for the city? A fair density?

You have 51.97% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.

?The Irony of Fate. A history of the Russians and their empire (1853-1991) ?, by Sabine Dullin, Payot,? Petite biblio histoire ?, unpublished, 300 p., ? 9, digital ? 7.

?The Soviet Age. A journey from the Russian Empire to the post-Soviet world ?, by Alain Blum, Françoise Daucé, Marc Elie and Isabelle Ohayon, Armand Colin,? Mnémosya ?, 432 p., ? 26.50, digital ? 18.

On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) officially ceased to exist. Thirty years later, how do historians approach this long attempt to implement ?real communism?, born with the takeover of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917? Sabine Dullin, professor of contemporary history at Sciences Po, has just published Irony of fate. Alain Blum, historian and demographer, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and director of research at the National Institute of Demographic Studies, co-wrote, with Françoise Daucé, Marc Elie and Isabelle Ohayon, Soviet age. Two syntheses based on some of the most recent developments in research, from which emerges a vision that is both intimate and distant, complex and tragic of what Soviet reality was, but also of its memory, as it continues to haunt Europe. And to polarize it, at a time when Vladimir Putin is making it an instrument of power.

Read also ?Against all odds?, by Euphrosinia Kersnovskaïa: the gulag as a dance of death

The thirty years that have passed since the end of the USSR have first been marked, for historians, by the opening of Soviet archives. How did you experience it?

Alain Blum: It was an extraordinary moment. If only because we realized that there were many more than we imagined. I was going to the Statistics archives at the time, and I discovered that, on the great famines of the early 1930s, all the data was there. The word “famine” was not used, but the explosion of mortality was evident. The dominant idea until then was that the Soviet authorities destroyed the compromising documents. It was not.

Sabine Dullin : What emerged was an enormous mass of documents. This is what Nicolas Werth called the “Report civilization”. Sometimes the archives were barely ajar, the foreign policy archives, for example, in which I worked. But we felt like we were pioneers with a continent to explore, treasure seekers. It was quite exhilarating. Soviet history was attractive then, especially as the atmosphere was, in all areas, open.

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?The Irony of Fate. A history of the Russians and their empire (1853-1991) ?, by Sabine Dullin, Payot,? Petite biblio histoire ?, unpublished, 300 p., ? 9, digital ? 7.

Read also ?Against all odds?, by Euphrosinia Kersnovskaïa: the gulag as a dance of death

The thirty years that have passed since the end of the USSR have first been marked, for historians, by the opening of Soviet archives. How did you experience it?

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To not miss anything on African news, subscribe to the newsletter of World Africa from this link. Every Saturday at 6 am, find a week of current events and debates treated by the editorial staff of “Monde Afrique”.

Tribune. On July 9, the criminal chamber near the Casablanca Court of Appeal sentenced Moroccan journalist Soulaimane Raissouni to five years in prison, without his presence or that of his lawyers. On July 19, the same criminal chamber sentenced Moroccan journalist Omar Radi to six years in prison.

Arrested in May and July 2020 respectively, these two journalists have been languishing behind bars for more than fifteen months in conditions of total isolation, which nothing justifies, which makes their imprisonment particularly harsh and inhuman. And this, while they deny outright the piling up of accusations brought against them (sexual offenses, espionage, attack on state security) and that their files do not seem to provide any proof of the materiality of the facts against them. are reproached.

Also read the interview: Maati Monjib: “Morocco is going through its most authoritarian period for thirty years”

The historian and journalist Maâti Monjib, sentenced for his part to one year in prison, was released on bail after a hunger strike and a strong mobilization in his favor nationally and internationally. But, to the police and judicial harassment of which he has been the object for years, is now added an administrative relentlessness which deprives him of all resources and arbitrarily prevents him from traveling to join his family and be treated by his resident doctors. in France.

Their trials at first instance were marred by multiple irregularities and violations of the rights of the defense, duly denounced in their time by their lawyers.

Healthy democratic life

In early December, their appeal trials began. Are we going to witness once again a travesty of justice? Will the conditions and rules of a fair trial be respected? Will Maâti Monjib, Omar Radi and Soulaimane Raissouni have the opportunity, as they wish, to defend themselves and provide proof of their innocence? Will they be able to call their witnesses, without them in turn being prosecuted, as was the case with journalist Imad Stitou? who to witness [à décharge, dans le procès d?Omar Radi] became accused and was sentenced to one year in prison, including six months suspended? Will they be able to obtain the taking into account of the documents in their possession which exonerate them from the charges brought against them?

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Also read the interview: Maati Monjib: “Morocco is going through its most authoritarian period for thirty years”

Their trials at first instance were marred by multiple irregularities and violations of the rights of the defense, duly denounced in their time by their lawyers.

Healthy democratic life

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The historian Michel Rouche, who died on December 5, in Paris, at the age of 87, was a great specialist in the history of Gaul, known to be one of the best connoisseurs of the reign of Clovis.

Born in Paris on May 30, 1934, Michel Rouche grew up in Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme). Entrusted, during the Second World War, to his Auvergne uncle by his parents “gone to Paris” a few years earlier, he saw the end of the agricultural world marked by “Physical strength, the cult of work and the fear of lacking”. A Pilgrim Magazine, he explained, in 2003, that his vocation as a historian was born at the age of 5, when he took the rue Grégoire-de-Tours every morning to go to school: ?I was curious, the name struck me. I decided to find out what was behind it. “

In 1943, he joined his parents in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he passed the philosophy baccalaureate. Received the aggregation of history in 1959, Michel Rouche resumed his investigation of Grégoire de Tours. The chronicler of VI^ecentury, author of a History of the Franks, serves as the source for his thesis, which he devoted in 1976 to Aquitaine from the Visigoths to the Arabs (481-781). He shows that the space between the Loire and the Pyrenees, deeply Romanized between the I^is and IV^e centuries, constituted during the four following centuries a veritable reservoir of wealth and frameworks, from which the barbarized north drew shamelessly.

Convinced Catholic

At the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where he took theology courses, Michel Rouche met Monique, whom he married in 1961, and with whom he had four children. A convinced Catholic, he made the history of the Church his specialty. Two encounters left a lasting mark on him: that of Father Maxime Charles, chaplain of the Richelieu Center, a stone’s throw from the Sorbonne, who introduced him to both the Fathers of the Church, psychoanalysis and Henri-Irénée Marrou, specialist in history of Christianity.

Read also (archice from 2006): Henri-Irénée Marrou: history as a spiritual quest

Appointed assistant at the Sorbonne in 1963, he became a professor at the University of Lille-III, before returning to the Sorbonne-Paris-IV, where he taught from 1989 until his retirement in 2003. The historian is involved also in Catholicism. From 1979, he took charge of the review Alliance, which intends to renew the gaze on the family: the historian insists on the fact that the Church does not condemn the pleasure in marriage and that the Christian ideal of a monogamous marriage, freely consented and faithful, is not dead. He will defend these ideas at the Institute of the Family, which he will animate at the request of Cardinal Lustiger and in several books, including Sexuality, intimacy and society under the gaze of history, published with the journalist Benoît de Sagazan (ed. CLD, 2005).

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The historian Michel Rouche, who died on December 5, in Paris, at the age of 87, was a great specialist in the history of Gaul, known to be one of the best connoisseurs of the reign of Clovis.

Convinced Catholic

Read also (archice from 2006): Henri-Irénée Marrou: history as a spiritual quest

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Beninese President Patrice Talon at Charles-de-Gaulle Stadium in Porto-Novo, May 23, 2021.

Tribune. Ten years and twenty years in prison! These are the sentences to which the constitutional law professor Joël Aïvo and the former Keeper of the Seals Reckya Madougou were sentenced in Benin on December 6 and 10. Inflicted by the exceptional jurisdiction of the Court for the Repression of Economic Offenses and Terrorism (CRIET), created in 2018 with the aim of silencing and eliminating any political opposition to the omnipotence of President Patrice Talon, these penalties constitute the last manifestation of a descent into authoritarian hell in Benin.

This catastrophe is all the more dramatic as this country had inaugurated an exceptional democratic era thanks to the consensual mode of adoption of the Constitution of December 11, 1990. Since then, thanks to responsible political actors and independent counter-powers – to the Like the Constitutional Court chaired by outstanding jurists such as Robert Dossou or Theodore Holo – the former Dahomey had become a democratic gem, praised and admired throughout West Africa and beyond. The arrival to power of businessman Patrice Talon in 2016, however, marked the beginning of an indisputable “Democratic deconsolidation”, to use the expression of political scientists Yasha Mounk and Stéphane Foa. Like what is happening in many states around the world, the law is handled in such a way that it becomes the enemy of the rule of law.

Read also In Benin, the heavy hand of justice on political opponents

In Benin, the rules of the democratic game were changed overnight: in 2019, a new Constitution was adopted, without respecting the rules of revision laid down by the Constitution of 1990 such as those of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and governance. Other types of manipulation affected electoral legislation and the exercise of judicial power. In the end, everything was meticulously and very cleverly organized so that the control of the Beninese executive was total over all the constituted powers.

Machiavellian process

The attack on the independence of the judiciary is a contemporary mark of illiberal times. Strong men, once elected, deconstruct the principle of the separation of powers in order to better maintain themselves at the head of the State. Benin is no exception to this process which bears witness to an authoritarian turn around the world, at work in Poland or Hungary for example.

In addition to a constitutional court under orders – its current president Joseph Djogbenou, who orchestrated the disputed constitutional reform, happens to be the president’s former lawyer as well as his former Keeper of the Seals -, CRIET, through its decisions , has become the emblem of muzzled justice.

Read also In Benin, the opponent Joël Aïvo, sentenced to ten years in prison, denounces a “political revenge”

Before the convictions of Joël Aïvo and Reckya Madougou, other political opponents suffered the same fate, with one difference, however: they were able to escape imprisonment and are now all in exile. Before the Beninese government denounced the jurisdiction of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2020, the latter had perfectly highlighted all the dysfunctions of justice in Benin. Just read the cases of Lionel Zinsou, Sébastien Ajavon, Valentin Djénontin, Komi Koutché ? all examined by the Pan-African human rights jurisdiction – to take stock of the relentless and Machiavellian process of undermining the independence of the judiciary.

Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen is professor of public law at the Sorbonne Law School (Paris 1) and director of the master’s 2 “human rights and the European Union” at the Sorbonne Institute for Research in International and European Law (Iredies) .

Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen

Read also In Benin, the heavy hand of justice on political opponents

Machiavellian process

Read also In Benin, the opponent Joël Aïvo, sentenced to ten years in prison, denounces a “political revenge”

Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen