Elsa Marcel (Lawyer and activist from Revolution permanente) talking about Georges Ibrahim Abdallah
What matters to the State in this type of cases is that nobody ever gets out while still being able their kept the same moral compass and ideas. Their issue with Abdallah is not that they think he plans on joining back armed resistance the second he is freed. Nobody thinks he will, no judge seriously thinks that he will it makes no sense. But what they can’t accept is that after all these years of psychological pression in jail, they can’t manage to make him say that the occupation of Lebanon is not a big deal to him and that the Palestinian cause is not important. You cannot make him say it. He’s rather die in jail than say it. And the French government cannot stand that he stays with his head up high, that he still stand by his ideas in a context where they try to crush any form of political opposition.
Even people like Yves Bonnet who was the director of the equivalent of the DGSI back then (French equivalent of the FBI) that’s what we are seeing is a State revenge against Abdallah. What’s actually at stake is the repression of the anti imperialism struggle as a principle. Because there’s nobody today to say that he actually did what he is accused of. Everyone explains that his trial was rigged against him.
The second thing I disagree with is to say that he is an exception. Obviously he represent the worst that can be done by justice in France. But he is not an exception. Liberal democracies and the French government are very used to blind, brutal and bloody repression against anti colonialism activists no matter where they come from.
We’re talking about a country that was capable of using torture in Algeria. I mean all the politicians gathered to pay tribute to Jean Marie Le Pen. But we’re talking about a country where there was generals Bigeard, Massu and all who would the feet of Algerians in basins filled with concrete before throwing them from planes into the Mediterranean Sea. A country who did the same thing in Vietnam and inspired the Argentinian dictatorship where 30000 people disappeared. So Georges Abdallah’s case is not an exception. It’s the common practice of all liberal and imperialist democracies when they need to defend themselves because they consider that their interests are put at risks. We’re not talking about being against or in favor of armed rebellion here that’s not the subject. The subject is that Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s case is interesting because it shows what is are liberal democracies. And they have nothing to do with human rights, the right to protest or the right to organize because when they feel threatened especially when it’s a matter of liberation against colonialism, liberal democracies is violently out of control and that’s what happening for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Link to the video (TikTok) in French
